Читать книгу The Hungry Heart - David Graham Phillips - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Next morning, after her usual breakfast alone, she took Winchie and went across in the motor boat to her father's. If she had been led blindfold into that house she would have known, from the instant of the opening of the door, that she was at home. Every home has its individual odor. Hers had a clean, comfortable perfume suggestive of lavender. She inhaled it deeply now as she paused a moment in the front hall—inhaled it with a sudden sense of peace, of sorrow shut out securely. She left the baby in the sitting room with her sister Lal, and sought out her mother in the pleasant old-fashioned back parlor with its outlook on the hollyhocks and sunflowers of the kitchen garden. Mrs. Benedict, a model of judicial sternness, as her husband was of judicial gentleness, sat reading a pious book by the open window. She glanced up as her daughter entered, and prepared her cold-looking cheek for the conventional salute. But Courtney was in no mood for conventions. She seated herself on the roll of the horsehair sofa. "Mother," she said, "I want to talk to you about Richard."

The tone was a forewarning—an ominous forewarning because it was calm. Mrs. Benedict, for all her resolute unworldliness, had been unable to live sixty-seven years without there having been forced upon her an amount of wisdom sufficient to store to bursting the mind of any woman half her age. She closed the heavy-looking book in her lap, leaving her glasses to mark the place. "I don't think I need tell a daughter of mine that she cannot discuss her husband with anyone."

Courtney flushed. "That's just it," replied she. "He is no longer my husband."

She was astonished at her mother's composure. An announcement about the weather could not have been less excitedly received. She did not realize how plainly she was showing, in her changed countenance, in stern eyes and resolute chin, the evidences a mother could hardly fail to read—evidences of a mood a sensible mother would not aggravate by agitation. "I cannot live with him," she went on. "I've brought Winchie and come home."

Her words startled herself. In this imperturbable, severely sensible presence they sounded hysterical, theatrical, though she had thought out the idea they conveyed with what she felt sure was the utmost deliberation. Her mother's gray-green eyes looked at her—simply looked.

"I know you don't believe in divorce, mother. But he and I have never been really married. He's entirely different from the man I loved. And he— What he feels for me isn't love at all. He doesn't know me—and doesn't want to know me."

"Has he sent you away?"

"Oh, no. He's satisfied."

Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious book, said coldly and calmly: "Then you will go back to him."

"Never. I refuse to live with a man who classes me with the lower animals. I——"

Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted. "Don't say things you will have to take back. You will return because there is no place else for you."

"Mother! Do you refuse to take me and Winchie? Oh, you don't understand. You—who believe in religion—you couldn't let me——"

"Your father," interrupted her mother in the same cold, placid way, "is not to be made judge again. We shall have to give up this house and retire to the farm. We have nothing but the farm. It will take every cent we can rake and scrape to pay the insurance premiums. The insurance premiums must be paid. The insurance is for your sisters. They have no husbands." And with these few bald statements she stopped, for she knew that under her daughter's youthful idealism there was the solid rock of common sense, that behind her impetuosity there was her father's own instinct for justice.

"The farm," said Courtney, stunned. "The farm." Twenty miles back in the wilderness—a living death—burial alive. "Oh, mother!" And the girl flung herself down beside the old woman and clasped her round the waist. "You shan't go there! I'll go back to Richard and we'll see that you and father and Lal and Ann stay on here."

Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight-back chair in which she sat. The blood burned brightly in the center of each of her white cheeks, but her voice was distinctly softer as she said: "You will go back. But we accept nothing from anybody."

Courtney hung her head. "Of course not," she said, hurried and confused. "I spoke on impulse."

"You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict. "You are rumpling your dress."

But Courtney was not hurt. She had an instinct why her mother wished her to sit at a distance. "Very well, mother," said she meekly, and obeyed.

After a pause Mrs. Benedict spoke: "I was not surprised when you told me. I suppose there is not one woman in ten thousand who doesn't at least once in the first five years of her married life resolve to leave her husband."

"But it's different with me. I must have something—and I have nothing."

"You have your home and Winchie."

"That house—those prim, dressed-up looking grounds—they've always oppressed me. And I hate them—now that—" She checked herself. How futile to relate and to rail. "As for Winchie, he's not enough."

"There will be others presently."

Courtney gave her mother a horrified look.

"You will do your duty as a wife, and the children will be your reward."

Courtney could not discuss this; discussion would be both useless and painful. "There may be some women who could be content with looking after a house and the wants of children," said she. "But I'm not one of them, and I never saw or heard of a worth-while woman who was. How am I to spend the time? I'm like you—I don't care for running about doing inane things. I can't just read and read, with no purpose, no sympathy. It seems to me I could do almost anything with love—almost nothing without it.... Brought up and educated like a man, and then condemned to the old-fashioned life for women—a life no man would endure!"

Her mother was looking out through the window, a strange expression about her stern mouth—the expression of one who, old and in a far, cold land, thinks of home and youth when the sun warmed the blood and the heart.

"What shall I do if I go back?" repeated Courtney. "But why ask that? I've simply got to go back. As you say, there's no place else for me." A flush of shame overspread her cheeks. "Oh, it's so degrading!"

"You forget Winchie," said her mother, and her tone was gentle.

"No, I thought of that excuse. But I was ashamed to speak it. It seemed like hypocrisy. Of course, I've got to go back for his sake. But if I hadn't him I'd go back just the same. Mother, you ought to have had me educated more or else less. If I knew less I could be content with the sort of life women used to think was the summit of earthly bliss. If I knew more I could make my own life. I could be independent. I begin to understand why women are restless nowadays. We're neither the one thing nor the other."

Up to a certain point Mrs. Benedict could understand her daughter, could sympathize. She could even have supplemented Courtney's forebodings as to the future with drearier actualities of experience. But beyond that point the two women were hopelessly apart. "You are warring with God," she rebuked. "He has ordained woman's position." And to her mind that settled everything.

"It isn't God," replied Courtney. "It's just ignorance."

"It is God," declared her mother, in the fanatic tone that told Courtney her mind was closed.

The mother and daughter belonged to two different generations—the two that are perhaps further apart than any two in all human history. Courtney saw how far apart she and her mother were, thought she understood why her mother could sympathize with her restlessness in woman's ancient bondage, but could only say "sacrilege" when the younger and better educated woman went on from vague restlessness to open revolt.

"God has seen fit to make the lot of woman hard," said the mother.

"If that is God," cried the daughter, "then the less said about Him the better."

"Courtney, your sinful heart will bring you to grief."

"Is it a sin to think?"

"I sometimes believe it is—for a woman," replied the mother, with the kind of bitter irony into which the most reverent devotee is sometimes goaded by the whimsical cruelties of his deity.

Courtney had long since learned to be unargumentative before her mother's somber and savage religion, so logical yet so inhuman. She had dimly felt that if she ever investigated religion, the misery of the world would compel her to choose between believing in her mother's devil god and believing nothing. So she left religion aside in her scheme of life, like so many of the men and women of her generation.

"I ought to have had more education or less," she repeated. "I ought to have had more, for it wouldn't have been fair to give me less than the rest of the girls have."

She fancied it was her formal education of the college that had made her think and feel as she did. In fact, that had little, perhaps nothing, to do with it; for colleges, except the as yet few scientific schools—stupefy or stunt more minds than they stimulate. She was simply a child of her own generation, and the forces that were stirring her to restlessness were part of its universal atmosphere—the atmosphere all who live in it must breathe, the "spirit of the time" that makes the very yokel with his eyes upon the clod see things in it his yokel father never saw.

She knew her mother would gladly help her, but she realized she might as hopefully appeal to Winchie. All her mother could say would be: "Yes, it is sad. But the only thing to do is to return and pretend to be the old-fashioned wife, and perhaps custom will make the harness cease to gall." Well, perhaps her mother was right; perhaps there was no solution, no self-respecting hopeful solution. Certainly she could not support herself, except in some menial and meager way that would more surely kill all that was aspiring in her than would submission to the lot which universal custom made abject only in theory. She could not support herself—and there was Winchie, too. Winchie had his rights—rights to the advantages his father's position and fortune gave. Dick had made it clear that he did not and would not have the kind of love, the kind of relationship, she believed in. She must go on his terms or not at all.

She ended the long silence, during which her mother sat motionless in an attitude of patient waiting for the inevitable. "I will go," she said. "And I will try to be to him the kind of wife he wants."

Mrs. Benedict looked at her daughter; there were tears of pride in her eyes. "That is right," she said, and they talked of it no more.

But on the way back in the motor boat, and for the rest of that day, and for a good part of many a day and many a night thereafter, Courtney Vaughan's mind was stormily busy. It teemed with the thoughts that in this age of the break-up of the old-fashioned institution of the family force themselves early or late upon every woman endowed with the intelligence to have, or to dream of, self-respect.

Thenceforth Dick Vaughan, if he had thought about it at all, would have congratulated himself on his wise and thorough adjustment of his threatened domestic affairs. But he gave no more thought to it than does the next human being. We do not annoy ourselves with what is going on in the heads of those around us. We look only at results. And usually this plan works well; for, no matter what the average human being may have in mind, the habit of a routine of action ultimately determines his or her real self. Once in a while, however, circumstances interfere, encourage the latent revolt against action's routine apparently so placidly pursued. But this is rare.

The weeks, the months went by; and Courtney seemed, and thought herself, a typical "settled" wife and mother. That is, as "settled" as an intelligent, energetic, and young woman, restless in mind and body, could be. She did not attempt to come to a definite verbal understanding with him. What would be the use? There was nothing to change except herself. There was nothing to explain. She understood him. He did not understand her, did not wish to, could not on account of his prejudices, however carefully she might explain. "No," thought she, "the only thing is for me to accept my position as woman and adapt myself to it, since I haven't the right, or the courage, or the whatever it is I lack, to do as I'd like." The only outward difference in their relations was that she rarely talked with him, and when he was about, fell into his habit of abstraction.

That winter he became extremely irregular about coming to dinner, and as the days lengthened with the spring he often worked on through supper time also. In late May or early June he began to note that when he did come up to the house for supper, his wife was sometimes there and sometimes not. Gradually her absence made an impression on him, and her always answering his inquiry with, "I was over at the club." As that meant the Outing Club, established and supported and frequented by the young people of Wenona and its suburbs, he was entirely satisfied. This, until about midsummer. One evening, when she returned in the dusk from supper at the club, she found him seated on the bench at the landing stage, smoking moodily. He was scantily civil to Shirley Drummond, who had brought her in the club launch. When Shirley was well on the way back to the north shore, Courtney, who had seated herself beside her husband, spoke of the heat and unwound the chiffon scarf about her bare neck and shoulders. Dick glanced round. In some moods he would not have seen at all. In other moods those slender shoulders, that graceful throat, and the small head with its lightly borne masses of auburn hair would have appealed to his pride and joy of possession. But things had gone wrong at "the shop," and he was in the mood that could readily either turn him to her for the consolation of a "lighter hour" or set him off in a rage. He frowned upon the exposed shoulders.

"Where did you get that dress?" he demanded.

She heard simply the question. Her thoughts were on the events of the evening at the club. "Had it made here," said she, unconscious of his mood. "It's something like one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris. Like it?"

To her amazement he replied angrily: "I do not. I've never seen a dress I disapproved of so thoroughly. Don't wear it again, and please be careful how you adopt a fashion you get that way. French fashions are set by a class of women I couldn't speak to you about. Respectable women have to alter them greatly."

"Why, what's the matter with the dress?" exclaimed she. "Everyone admired it at the club."

"It isn't decent," replied he. "I know you are so innocent that you don't think of those things. But it's my duty to protect you. I won't have men commenting on my wife's person."

"But, Dick," protested she, "this isn't a low-cut dress. It's higher than those I usually wear. It has bands across the shoulders and a real back——"

"Then change all your dresses. You must not make yourself conspicuous."

"Conspicuous! The other women wear much lower-cut dresses than I do."

"I know about such things," said he peremptorily. "I don't believe in low-neck dresses anyhow. What business has a good woman flaunting her charms—rousing in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband only?"

"Don't you think it's all a matter of custom?" she said persuasively. She was not convinced, or even shaken. But she admired the shrewdness of his argument. The reason she had never grown to dislike him was that even in his prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his narrowest narrowness was he ever petty. "Now really, Dick, if that were carried out logically, a woman'd have to cover her face and not speak, for often it's a woman's voice that charms a man"—with a little laugh—"and once in a long while what she says."

"I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, "if I had my way. That reminds me. You're away from home very often these days, I notice. You're over at the club a great deal."

"The weather's been so fine, everybody goes."

"I've no objection to your going occasionally. But after all the place for a good woman is at home."

She thought so too, as a general principle; home undoubtedly was the place for a good woman, or any sort of woman, or for a man; that was to her mind the meaning of home—the most attractive, the most magnetic spot on earth. However, the Vaughan place was not "home." She could not discuss this with him, so she simply answered, "But I get bored—here alone—and with nothing to do. And nobody'll come at this time of year, with something on at the club every day and evening."

"You don't even stay home to meals."

"Neither do you."

"But I haven't Winchie to look after."

"He plays with the other children at the kindergarten. And Miss Brockholst can keep a child amused as I couldn't. When I stay out to supper I see that Nanny or Lizzie brings him home and puts him to bed. And I'm not out to supper often."

"I don't like it," said Dick imperiously.

"You ought to come with me," rejoined she. "But you never will."

"I've no time for foolishness. And I'm sure you haven't either."

"What ought I to do with myself?"

"What other good women do. Our mothers didn't hang about clubs."

"No. But these aren't pioneer times. Things are entirely different nowadays. That was why—" She did not finish. She did not wish to remind him how he had refused to let her either share his life or make a life of her own. She refrained because the subject might be unpleasant to him. It was no longer unpleasant to her; she now had not the least desire to share his life, was in a way content to drift aimlessly along with the rest of the aimless women.

"Yes, many of the women are different nowadays," said he. "The more reason for my wife's conducting herself as a woman should."

She flushed with sudden anger. "Why can't you accept a woman as a human being?" exclaimed she. "Oh, you men—tempting—compelling—us to be hypocrites—and making our natural impulses rot into vices because they have to be hid away in the dark."

"We will not quarrel," said he, in the calm superior tone he always took when their talk touched on the two sexes. "I simply say I will not tolerate my wife's being a club lounger."

To have answered would have been to say what must precipitate a furious and futile quarrel. She kept silent, with less effort than many women would have to make in the circumstances. She had had the conventional feminine training in self-suppression, that so often gives women the seeming of duplicity and only too often imperceptibly leads them into forming the habit of duplicity. She had also had special training in self-concealment through having been brought up austerely. She kept silent, and made up her mind to obey. She had heard much talk among the women at the club about the "rights of a wife"; but it had not convinced her. She could not see that she, or any other of the women married as was she, contributed to the family anything that entitled her to oppose the husband's will as to how it should be conducted. And she would have scorned to get by cajolery what she could not have got honestly. She was thus the good wife, not through fear of him, for she was not a coward and he was not the sort of small tyrant that makes the women and the children tremble; nor was it because she was faithful to her marriage vows, for she never thought of them. Her submissiveness was entirely due to the agreement she had tacitly signed the day she went back to him, after the talk with her mother. In return for shelter and support she would be, so far as she could, the kind of wife he wanted.