_ BOOK II CHAPTER IV. THE NEW DOCTRINE
This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess, not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French, clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette, and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not to bring peace, but a sword.
At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his "den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.
"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face. "For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much worse. You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs--of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling, illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned, she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he admitted.
"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have married you--never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"
"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know enough to keep thin."
He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.
"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but you never broke loose this way before."
"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone. I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get married again."
"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his breath.
"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon. She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
Her husband got up.
"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.
There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it. He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's--it's an ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry me in a minute."
He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think you've got to have one."
"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph frame or a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous, old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie Farwell could have made anything out of it."
"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell? Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't. She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some day."
"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied. "We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
Honora sprang to her feet.
"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for dinner-and you'll never be ready."
"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition. Let's talk it over a little more--"
"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."
"For my own good!"
"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married me," she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared into her room and closed the door.
We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock, but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether he had ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which had as yet eluded him. And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected. Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.
We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.
"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout? Isn't he a darling?"
"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.
Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."
"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so we've got just ourselves."
Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad, when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?" she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked superciliously down from the walls.
"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora. And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is wonderful. How do you like this dress?"
"All your things are exquisite."
"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.
Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself. Only the hypercritical, when Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle. She was the most finished of finished products. Her complexion was high and (be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the world. It was impossible not to love her.
"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table, "how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like Rivington all these years! I think she's an angel to have stood it. Men are beyond me. Do you know what an attractive wife you've got? I've just been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared with her, and the men were crazy about her."
"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished his first glass of champagne.
"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take a house at Quicksands? You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a bathing suit. Why don't you come down?"
"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.
"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that gentleman admitted with gravity. "But I haven't decided anything. There are certain drawbacks--"
"Drawbacks!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "Drawbacks at Quicksands! I'd like to know what they are. Don't be silly, Howard. You get more for your money there than any place I know." Suddenly the light of an inspiration came into her eyes, and she turned to her husband. "Sid, the Alfred Fern house is for rent, isn't it?"
"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.
"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam. "What an imbecile I was not to think of it! It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it last fall. It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard. They couldn't have failed more opportunely. I'm sorry for Alfred, but I always thought Louise Fern a little snob. Sid, you must see Alfred down town the first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll rent it for. Tell him I wish to know."
"But--my dear Lily--began Mr. Dallam apologetically.
"There!" complained his wife, "you're always raising objections to my most charming and sensible plans. You act as though you wanted Honora and Howard to stay in Rivington."
"My dear Lily!" he protested again. And words failing him, he sought by a gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction.
"What harm can it do?" she asked plaintively. "Howard doesn't have to rent the house, although it would be a sin if he didn't. Find out the rent in the morning, Sid, and we'll all four go down on Sunday and look at it, and lunch at the Quicksands Club. I'm sure I can get out of my engagement at Laura Dean's--this is so important. What do you say, Honora?"
"I think it would be delightful," said Honora. _