Читать книгу The Hungry Heart - David Graham Phillips - Страница 5

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Except courtship and honeymoon never had she been so happy as in the last two months before the baby came. "Every-one is spoiling me," she said, dazzled by the revelations of thoughtfulness and affection. Her friends, her acquaintances, showered attentions upon her. Even her mother, austere and cold, unbent. Her father, the shy, the silent, betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense longing for love. The two sour old-maid sisters were all tenderness and chaste excitement. As for Dick, he actually neglected his career. Again and again he would stop in the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and inquire what he could do for her—this when there was a private telephone at his elbow.

She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suffered hardly at all. As for the baby, he came into the world positively shrieking with health. Finally, she had none of the petty vanity that leads many a first-time mother into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique achievement, original with herself. Thus the agitation quickly died away, and life resumed its former course, except that she had a baby to take care of. At first it was great fun. Dick helped her, forgot his chemistry, seemed in the way to become a father of unprecedented devotion. But this did not last long. He loved playthings and played with them; but the call of his career was the strong force in his life, and he went back to the laboratory. She might have given the baby over to a nurse, as all the other women were doing. But it seemed to her that, as she was responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness, she could not do less than guard him until he was able to look out for himself. "When he can talk and tell me exactly how's he treated when I'm not around," said she, "why, perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse—if he needs one. But until then I'll be nurse myself."

Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she wished she had not committed herself openly and positively. She loved her baby as much as any mother could—and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and handsome, and showing signs of being well bred while still a speechless animal. But, except in romances and make-believe life, the deepest love wearies of sacrifices, though it gladly makes them. This baby—Benedict they named him, but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could—this baby made a slave of her. She understood why so many women retrograde after the birth of the first child. The temptation to go to seed is powerful enough in the most favorable circumstances, once a woman has caught a husband and secured a living for life. A baby, she soon saw, made that temptation tenfold stronger. She wondered what it was in her that compelled her to fight unyieldingly against being demoralized.

Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for anything else. He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of expecting it. She did not judge him—at least, not consciously. She assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her as futile as railing against any fundamental of life—against being unable to fly instead of walk. She made occupation for herself, as will presently appear. But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her. But for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict's equally barren religiosity. Winchie's spirits of overflowing health, his newcomer's delight in life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping him in perfect health—outdoors, winter and summer, and always active, she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of things was rarely so much as obscured.

One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading. She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if he became restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman. Dick gave her the kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour." She merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention like "my dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever he had shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she had instantly responded. She assumed this readiness meant love; in fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet discovered. That evening, for the first time, she did not respond. It was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two years and a half before.

He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over the soft down at the nape of her neck. It has become second nature to women to repress their active emotions, no matter how strong, and to wait upon the man—an evidence of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently disguised as "womanly delicacy and reserve." In response to the signal of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put up her hand and patted his. Her gesture was genuinely affectionate—but there had been a time when it would not have been mechanical. She did not lift her eyes from the page.

"Is that a good love story?" asked he. "As good as ours?"

A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played round her lips. But—her glance remained upon her reading. "It isn't a novel," replied she. "It's a treatise."

"A treatise?" mocked he. "Gracious me! What a wise fairy it is! Put it away, and let's go on the balcony. There'll not be many more sit-out nights."

He moved to pick her up in his arms. But she smilingly pushed him away. "I want to finish this chapter," said she.

"All right. I'll go out and smoke. Don't be long."

And he sauntered through the window door. After perhaps a quarter of an hour she joined him in the hammock. Matrimony is a curious fabric of set phrases, set thoughts, and set actions. It was their habit, in such circumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to put his arm round her. The habit was on this occasion observed. It was her habit to assume that she was happy—and she now so assumed. He began the conversation. "I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily. "What are all those books on the table? They look serious—businesslike."

"Let's not talk about anything serious. You always laugh at me or get absent-minded."

"But you seemed so absorbed. What was it?"

"Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and studying for the past year. You see, when a woman takes care of a baby, she's got to look out or she'll become one herself."

"But you are a baby." And there followed the usual caresses.

"Not a real baby," said she. "We both act like children at times—very little children. But we'd not care for each other as we do if either of us were really infantile. It takes a grown person to play baby attractively."

"Baby," he insisted fondly. He was smiling with the masculinely patronizing tolerance to which she had grown so used that she never noted it. He appreciated that she was clever—with the woman sort of cleverness—bright, witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things. But, being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are entirely different—never so different as when woman mind seems to be like man mind—just as purely instinctive actions of animals seem to display profound reasoning power. "And what was the baby wrinkling its brow over, in there? The care and feeding of infants?"

"Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. "I went into that before Winchie came. You think it's all a joke—my reading and studying. But the real joke is your thinking so. You must remember I can't afford to let myself go, as you do."

He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing thoughts. At this last remark he laughed. "Now, what does that mean?" he inquired.

"You've given up everything for chemistry. Haven't you noticed that we can hardly talk to each other—that you can hardly talk to anybody?"

"I never did have much talent for small talk."

"But I didn't mean small talk. You care only for chemistry, know only chemistry. You never did know or care much about literature or art or music or any of the worth-while things except just your own specialty. And you can afford to be that way. It's your career, and also you're not a woman and a mother."

He had stopped caressing her. "I confess I don't understand," said he stiffly.

"A man can afford to be narrow—not to know life or the world. But a mother—if she's the right sort—has to try to know everything. She's got to bring up children—and how can she hope to teach and train successfully if she doesn't know?"

"I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in his voice. "A woman must be pure, innocent, womanly—as you are. Nature didn't make her to be learned or wise—to think. She has her instincts to keep her straight, and a father or a husband——"

"Dick—Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. "What an old fogey it is! You talk like—like an ordinary man. How bored you'd be if you had that kind of wife—one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't want to be—one who was merely a mistress."

Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now. "Those books in there— Courtney, you're not reading impure, upsetting books?"

She laughed delightedly.

"What are those books?" he insisted.

"They're—now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked—they're on landscape gardening and interior decoration." She looked up at him mischievously in the starlight. "Are they womanly enough to suit you?"

"Yes, indeed," said he heartily. "But I might have known you'd not read anything a good woman oughtn't. I love you as you are—and I'd hate to see you changed, my spotless little angel."

She submitted to his caresses. And presently, in that brain which he would have thought it absurd to look into except for the very lightest kind of amusement, there formed the first really disloyal thought she had ever permitted to be born. The thought was: "Dick certainly does take himself terribly seriously. If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was getting to be a prig." She was instantly shocked at herself, as one always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has set up for blind worship. She felt there was but one way to prevent the recurrence of such perilous blasphemy. After a brief silence she said in a constrained voice: "Dick, I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl, and I went to college, and I'm a wife and a mother. If by innocence you mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent."

She saw that he was highly amused.

"Women," she went on earnestly, "always tell each other that before men it's wise to pretend to be ignorant and too refined to know life, and to be shocked at everything. They say it pleases men. But I'm sure you're not that sort of man. Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite."

"That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the amused smile lingering. "Go on with your interior decoration and landscape gardening. You can't learn too much about them." He was leaning back again, secure, comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing her.

She gave it up, as she always did when she found herself being ruffled by that strange antiquated prejudice of his. It would yield in time. Besides, what did it really matter?—since they loved each other, and would be happy once their real life got under way. "I'd have taken up chemistry," she continued, "but one can't go far alone in that, with only books. And you wouldn't help me. I'm afraid you'll find me very rusty when I come down to the laboratory next spring."

His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he was unpleasantly spared the necessity. Out of a dark recess of memory sprang the ghost—the "whim." He was astounded, irritated, alarmed. He had supposed he had heard the last of that silly notion about helping him; she hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years. Now—here it was again!

"Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, "I've appreciated your not speaking of it, or even talking about what you were doing. If you had, the delay'd have been much harder to bear. For, as long as Winchie needs me, I simply can't come."

"I understand, dear," said he, much relieved.

"It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it?" she went on, dreamily gazing up into the great quiet sky. "The more I see of married people, and the more I think about married life, the clearer I see that two must have a common interest, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat frump or a professional minder of other people's business—a gossip or a charity worker."

If she had been looking, even in that faint light she could have seen his expression of gathering displeasure.

"Or else," she went on, "she seeks love elsewhere. Isn't it strange, Dick, how in unhappy marriages the so-called good women are the bad ones, and the so-called bad ones good? I mean, when a weak woman finds herself married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people say she's a good soul, when she's really degrading herself and rotting everybody round her. While a strong woman—one that's worth while—refuses to be crushed, and people call her bad. But then I've begun to think life's like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up slips round and changes the labels so that everything's named wrong."

She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to her the plainest common sense, and was all unconscious that she had brought him and herself where both were almost peering into the abyss between them. He was sitting up, was getting ready to deliver himself. Her next remark checked him. "Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going to have the interest that makes two lives one—makes it impossible to grow apart. It seems to me I can't wait for Winchie to release me so that I may come and work with you. Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry, and already know something about it?"

He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar between his opened lips.

She leaned her head affectionately against his arm. "I feel close to you to-night—feel that we're in perfect sympathy. Sometimes—I—I don't feel quite that way. Of course I know it's all right, but I get—afraid. It's such a long, long delay—and your work absorbs you—and we almost never talk as we're talking to-night. There have been times when—-I've almost—been afraid we were drifting apart."

"What nonsense!" he cried sharply. "How could that be? Do you suppose I don't know you're a good woman? You talk foolishly at times—things you've picked up from loose people. But you are a lady and a good woman."

She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. She swiftly changed the subject. "Anyhow, dearest, we shan't be in danger much longer. We're nearly to the end of the life we've been leading ever since we got back from our wedding trip. Just think—ever since then! How time has gone!"

He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been happy, and, even if things were to go on just as they are, we'd continue to be happy."

"Of course, you've had your work and I've had Winchie, and once in a while we have each other. But most of the happiness has been in looking forward, hasn't it?"

She assumed that his silence was assent.

"But don't think, dear," she said, "that I've been content just to wait. As soon as I saw it was going to be a long time before I could come to the laboratory——"

He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh cigar.

"—I made another occupation for myself. It'll be next spring at the earliest before I can come to you. And even then I'll be able to spend only part of the day. Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not at the kindergarten. Now that he's talking and understanding, it's more necessary than ever to watch over him. I've had to watch only his body. Now it's both his body and his mind; for, if any harm came to either, it'd be our fault, wouldn't it?"

"There's no doubt of that," said Dick with strong emphasis, as he seated himself in a chair opposite her. He thought this remark of hers opened the way out of his perplexity. "I don't see how you can come to the laboratory at all."

"Oh, yes. It's not so bad as that. If it were, I don't know what I'd do. It'd be choice between losing you and neglecting him."

"Trash!" exclaimed Dick impatiently. There seemed something essentially immoral in her whole attitude, an odor of immorality exuding from everything she said. It exasperated him that he could not locate it and use it as the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed. "Your good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of your losing me."

She laughed with raillery. "Oh, I know you're far too busy with your chemistry to wander. But that isn't what I meant. You understand." Her eyes shone upon him. "Sometimes—when we're holding each other tight and your lips are on mine—I can scarcely keep from crying. It seems to me we're like two held apart and trying to be one—and trying in vain. It's as if we touched only at the surface, and our bodies were keeping us from each other. But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really one. Closer and closer, day by day——"

She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms. He felt ashamed somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was beyond him. "How wonderful a pure woman is!" he thought.

After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, seated herself, leaning toward him. "But I started to tell you my plans."

"What plans?" he asked, in high good humor with her again and overflowing with "lighter-hour" tenderness. "Tell me quick and we'll go in. It's getting late." He moved to seat himself beside her.

"No," she said, laughingly. "Sit where you are. I want you to listen. It isn't often I can get you to listen. As I said, I've got to have something worth while to fill in as I look after Winchie when he's not at kindergarten. I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught him to amuse himself and not to look to me for everything. That was good for him and saved me. Well, I studied gardening and interior decoration."

"What a fuss you do make," said he, amused. "Why not just settle down and be a plain woman?"

"Shame on you! Tempting me to go to pieces."

"You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, my dear."

"You deserve to be married to one of them."

"I am," declared he. "Your whims don't deceive me. I know you. Let's go in, dear."

She shook her head in smiling reproach. "Then you don't care to hear my plans?"

"Oh, yes. What are they?"

"I've got everything ready to make those changes we discussed on our honeymoon."

"Really!" exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was expected, though he hadn't the remotest idea what she was talking about.

"Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be sure, and mustn't be extravagant. I've been very careful. I've made drawings and even water colors, for I thought I ought to see how things would look."

He was puzzled and alarmed. "I don't believe I know which scheme you mean," he said. "We discussed so many things on that trip."

"I mean, to change the house and grounds," explained she with bright enthusiasm. "They'll not be ugly and stiff and cold looking much longer."

He started up. "Courtney, what are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Why, Dick! Don't you remember? I told you some of my ideas on gardens and interiors, and you said——"

"I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped," interrupted he angrily. "I certainly never intended to let you tear things up and make a mess." He walked up and down. "What possesses you anyhow?" he cried. "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman? I never heard of such nonsense! I want you to stop meddling in things that are beyond you. I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother. I want you to stop annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an unsexed thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife."

She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It was as if he had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over.

"What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry stride to face her. "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on you. I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled. Who is it, Courtney?"

She was silent.

"Answer me!"

"It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way.

"It's not yourself. You are womanly."

"I've got to have something to do—something worth while—or I can't live."

"Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women."

"It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way. "It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you."

"Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he had thereby answered her.

She said dazedly: "You didn't mean it. No, you didn't mean it."

"Mean what?"

"All my plans—my year's work—and such a beautiful house and place I'll make." She started up, clasped her hands round his arm. "O Dick—don't be narrow—and so distrustful of me. I know I can do it. Let me show you my plans—my sketches——"

He took her hands, and said with gentle, firm earnestness, for he was ashamed of having lost his temper with a woman: "Courtney, I cannot have it. I will not let you disturb the place my grandfather gave his best thought to."

"But you don't like it, dear," she pleaded.

"I respect my grandfather's memory."

"But on our wedding trip you said——"

"Now, don't argue with me!"

"It's because you think I couldn't do it?"

"I know you couldn't—if you must have the truth."

"Let me show you my sketches and paintings," she pleaded, in a queer kind of quiet hysteria. "Let me explain my plans. I'm sure you'll——"

"Now, Courtney! I've told you my decision. I want to hear no more about it."

She looked up into his face searchingly. He was like the portrait of his unbending grandfather that made the library uncomfortable. Her arms fell to her sides. She went to the balcony rail, gazed out into the black masses of foliage. Taken completely by surprise, she could not at once realize any part, much less all, of what those words of his involved; but she felt in her heart the chill of a great fear—the fear of what she would think, of what she would know, when she did realize.

His voice interrupted. "While you're on the unpleasant subject of these notions of yours," he said, with an attempt at lightness in his embarrassed tone, "we might as well finish it—get it out of the way forever. I want you to stop thinking about the laboratory."

She turned, swift as a swallow.

"I admit I've been at fault—encouraging you to imagine I'd consent. But I thought you'd forget about it. Apparently you haven't."

A long silence.

"I repeat, I'm sorry I misled you. It seemed to me a trifling deception."

She did not speak, did not move.

"When you think it over, you'll see that I'm right—that we're much happier as we are."

After a long silence, which somehow alarmed him, though he told himself such a feeling was absurd, she crossed the balcony to the window. As she paused there, not looking toward him, the profile of those sweet, irregular features of hers stood out clearly. That expression, though it was quiet, increased his absurd alarm. "It's getting late," she said, and her tone was gentle, apologetic. "I think I'll go in."

"Are you angry, Courtney?"

"No," she replied. "I don't think so."

"Why are you silent?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I seem to have stopped inside."

He went and put his arms round her. She was passive as a doll. "Why, you're quite cold, child!"

"I must go in. Good night."

"I'll join you in a few minutes."

She shivered. "No," she said. "Good night."

He was somewhat disconcerted. Then he reflected that she could hardly be expected to give up her whims without a little struggling. "It shows how sweet and good she is," thought he, "that she took it so quietly." And he went to bed in the room across the hall—the room he had been occupying most of the time since three months before Winchie came. As he fell asleep he felt that he had laid "the ghost" and had settled all his domestic affairs upon the proper basis. He slept, but she lay awake the whole night, watching, tearless, beside her dead.