Читать книгу The Brute - Kummer Frederic Arnold - Страница 1

Every evening, almost, Donald Rogers and his wife Edith sat in a plain little living-room in their apartment in Harlem, and worked until ten or eleven o’clock. By that time they were both ready to go to bed. It was not very exciting. Edith darned stockings or sewed; Donald toiled at his desk, writing letters – going over reports. Sometimes, very rarely, they went to the theater. They had done the same thing for nearly eight years, and to Edith, at least, it seemed a very long time.

The room in which they sat reflected in its furnishings much of the life these two led. It seemed to suggest, in every line, an unceasing conflict between poverty and ambition – not, indeed, the poverty of the really poor, of those in actual want, but the poverty of the well born, of those whose desires are forever infinitely beyond their means.

This was evidenced by many curious contrasts. The furniture, for instance, was for the most part of that cheap and gloomy variety known as mission oak, yet the designs were good, as though its purchasers had striven toward some ideal which they had not the means to realize. The rug on the floor, an imitation oriental, was still of excellent coloring; the pictures showed taste in their selection – such taste, indeed, as is possible under the limitations imposed by a slender purse – among them might have been discovered a charming little water-color and some reproductions of etchings by Whistler.

The curtains were imitation lace, the ornaments on the mantel imitation bronze, the cushions in the Morris chair imitation Spanish leather. The keynote of the whole room was imitation – everything in it, almost, was the result of refinement and excellent taste on the one hand, hampered by lack of money on the other. The effect was somewhat that given by twenty dollar sets of ermine furs, or ropes of pearls at bargain-counter prices. Edith, caring more about such matters than her husband, realized this note of imitation keenly, but found it more satisfactory to have even the shadow of what she really desired than to drop back to another level of existence, and content herself with ingrain carpets, shiny yellow furniture, and the sort of pictures made of mother of pearl, which are given away with tea-store coupons. In her present environment, she chafed – in the other, she would have been suffocated.

On this particular night in March, they were at home as usual. Donald had composed himself at his desk, hunched over, his head resting upon his left hand, staring at the papers before him. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the trading-stamp clock on the mantel, and the clanking of the steam pipes. For a long time Donald stared, and wrote nothing. Suddenly he turned to his wife.

“For Heaven’s sake, Edith,” he exclaimed impatiently, “what’s the matter with those pipes?”

Edith glanced at him, but did not move. She came back slowly from her land of dreams.

“The janitor has probably just turned on the steam. It’s been off for the past week on account of the warm weather.”

Donald rose, and went nervously over to the radiator under the window.

“I can’t write with this infernal noise going on,” he grumbled, as he turned to his desk. “Will it be too cold for you?”

“Oh, no. I’m used to it.” Mrs. Rogers’ tone was patient, resigned.

Donald resumed his writing, and sat for a few moments in silence, but the tone of his wife’s remark had not been lost upon him. He turned toward her presently, with an anxious look, searching her face keenly.

“What’s the matter, Edith?” he inquired kindly. “Don’t you feel well?”

“Not particularly.” Mrs. Rogers’ voice was discouraging.

“Anything wrong?”

“No.”

“You haven’t seemed yourself for the past week. You don’t seem to take any interest in things.”

“What things?” inquired Edith, with sudden asperity. She took a sufficient interest in the things that seemed worth while to her, she well enough knew, but they were not those which made up her present surroundings.

Donald seemed hurt at her tone. He regarded her with an injured expression.

“Why,” he ventured hesitatingly, “all the things that make up our life – our home.”

The suggestion was not happy. It was, indeed, those very things that Edith had been mentally reviewing in her inner consciousness throughout the evening, and her conclusions had not been in their favor.

“The steam pipes, I suppose,” she returned scornfully, “and the price of eggs, and whether we are going to be able to pay our bills next month or not.”

“Don’t be so unkind, Edith,” said her husband, with an expression of pain. Her remark had hurt him, and, although she realized it, she somehow refused to admit to herself that she regretted it.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Surely you realize that I am doing the best I can,” he replied slowly. “I can’t do any more.”

“Well, suppose I do. Does that make it any easier?”

She felt angry and annoyed, first with Donald because he seemed unable to realize how barren her life with him was, and then with herself because she had allowed herself to become involved in this useless discussion. Donald, she knew, would always be the same. It was hopeless to expect him to change, or to try, by argument, to make him do so.

“Are you angry because I couldn’t afford to get you that new hat for Easter?” he asked, as he began to refill his pipe.

This falling back upon man’s universal belief that a woman’s happiness or unhappiness depends solely upon her clothes annoyed her still further.

“Don’t talk like a fool, Donald,” she exclaimed, throwing down her sewing angrily. “I’m tired, that’s all. For eight years I’ve darned stockings, collected trading stamps, done my own housework, and tried to imagine that the hats I’ve trimmed myself looked as though they came straight from Paris. When a woman has done that for eight years, she has a right to be tired.”

“But, Edith, it will not always be that way. You know how I am working for the future.”

Mrs. Rogers picked up her sewing and resumed her air of patient resignation. “The future is a long way off. When it comes, if it ever does, I shall probably be so old that I won’t care what sort of hats I wear.”

“Haven’t I had to endure it all, as well as you? Don’t you suppose it hurts me not to be able to give you everything you wish?”

“It’s different with a man.” She smiled a trifle bitterly, as she spoke. “You have your business, your friends, your ambitions. In ten years I shall be an old woman; you will be just ready to enjoy yourself.”

Donald rose from the desk and began to walk about the room nervously. He was too sincerely fond of Edith to want to quarrel with her, and he knew, as well as she did, the truth of what she had just said. After all, he thought, perhaps the woman does have the worst of the matrimonial bargain, in circumstances, at least, such as those with which he and Edith were struggling.

“There’s nothing I would care about enjoying, Edith, without you. Surely you know that.”

“I know. It’s very good of you to feel that way. It’s lack of money, I suppose, after all, that makes everything so hard.”

“I can’t do the impossible, Edith. You know what my income is, and what I have been scraping and saving for all these years.”

“To put every cent you had in the world into that glass factory in West Virginia. I know – very well.” It was clear, from the tone of Mrs. Rogers’ voice, that she felt little sympathy for this part of her husband’s plans, at any rate.

“Yes, I have. I know you have opposed it, but I am convinced that it is a great proposition. In five years, or possibly less, I expect to get big profits from it. Isn’t it worth waiting and saving for?”

“I don’t know whether it is or not.” Mrs. Rogers’ tone was not encouraging. “Five years is a long time. I’m not sure but I’d rather have a little bit more human pleasure and enjoyment as I go along. For years – ever since Bobbie was born – I’ve had to spend the summer here in this wretched, hot place. It hasn’t done me any good. It hasn’t done him any good. I’d rather you would put a little less into the glass business and a little more into your wife’s and child’s health and happiness.”

Mr. Rogers stopped in his pacing up and down the room. It was clear that his wife’s remarks had touched a sensitive spot.

“Edith,” he exclaimed, “you cannot mean what you say. Everything I have done has been for you and for him. Bobbie seems to me to be well enough. Think of the hundreds of thousands of children that have to spend the summer in the city. God knows I’d give my life for him, or for you, too, if you needed it; it’s what I am doing. I can’t do any more.”

“I know it,” said Edith, with a sigh. “I suppose I’m very unreasonable, but somehow my life has seemed so empty, all these years.”

“Haven’t you everything you need?”

“Everything I need? Do you think three meals a day and a place to sleep is everything a woman needs?”

“Many women have less.”

“And many have more. A woman’s needs depend upon her desires, her temperament. What may be a necessity to one, another would have no use for. Some women, down in Tenth Avenue, might think this Paradise.” She looked about the room scornfully. “And a lot more, up in Fifth Avenue, would think it – well – the other place. That’s the difference.”

Donald looked at her curiously, and noted her flushed face, her heaving breast. These things evidently were very near her heart. “What are your needs, Edith?” he asked kindly.

“How can you ask me such a question?” Edith failed to appreciate his kind intention. She was fairly launched upon her argument, and the tumult of discontent which had been gathering in her breast burst forth with bitter intensity. “Did you ever suppose for a moment that I was a woman who could be satisfied with the merest commonplaces of existence? Don’t you see that I need life – real, broadening, joyous, human life, with all its hopes, its fears, its longings, its successes, its failures? Do you think I find those things here?” She swept the room with an all-embracing gesture, and stood confronting him with flushed cheeks, her eyes flashing rebelliously.

Her evidence of feeling both startled and hurt him. He had supposed that all her years of patient waiting had covered a mind serenely satisfied with the present through a belief in the future. He looked at her for a few moments in surprise. “I am very sorry, Edith,” he began haltingly. “I, too, feel the need of those things, but I do not allow the lack of them to spoil my life. I have borne my trials and done my duty as best I could, and I expect you to do the same. If we have not money, and all the pleasures and luxuries it brings, we at least have health and our daily bread, and above all, our little boy. We ought to be very thankful.”

“Do you suppose for a moment that I do not appreciate Bobbie? He is the only thing that keeps me here.”

The troubled look on Donald’s face grew deeper as he answered her, and with it came an expression of alarm. He had never doubted Edith’s love for him, and her words were a great shock.

“The only thing that keeps you here!” he cried. “Is your love for me of no importance to you?”

Edith surveyed the plain, poorly furnished little room with ill-concealed dislike. “This sort of thing,” she said bitterly, “doesn’t offer much for love to feed upon.”

“Edith! You surely do not realize what you are saying. To hear you talk, anyone might suppose we were on the point of going to the poorhouse.”

“It couldn’t be worse. I’m tired of it, and I can’t help saying so. I suppose you will think me very ungrateful, but I can’t help it. We never have any pleasures, any happiness, any real enjoyment. It’s nothing but mere existence.”

“I don’t agree with you. I am not doing so badly. We are both of us young. In a few years I hope to be comparatively well off, and then things will be very different. I am working and striving for you every hour of the day. Do you think I would do it, if I did not feel that you love me – that you believed in me?”

He went over to her, and took her hand in his. “What has upset you so, to-night, dear? Is there anything you particularly want – anything that I could do for you? Tell me – if there is, you know I will do everything in my power to gratify you.”

“No – nothing that you could do.” She seemed unconscious of the pain she was giving him.

“I thought perhaps it was about this summer. You told me that your mother and sister were anxious to take a cottage at the seashore, and that they wanted you to go with them – is that it?”

“No,” she replied. “It isn’t important. You said you couldn’t afford it.”

Donald left her abruptly and, walking over to the desk, began to fumble nervously with the papers on it. It hurt him to the depths of his nature to be obliged to refuse Edith this request; indeed, what she had asked he had already himself thought of, and been forced to conclude that, much as he wanted to give her and Bobbie this pleasure, he could not do it. He turned to her with a nervous twitching of the mouth, which had of late become characteristic.

“Every year, Edith,” he said, “we have this discussion. Your mother and sister have no responsibilities. They can give up their rooms at the boarding house and go to the country without adding a dollar to their expenses. You cannot do that. It will cost a hundred dollars a month, at least, for your expenses and Bobbie’s, to say nothing of the extra expense of my taking my meals at restaurants. I can’t afford it this year, Edith. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” Her tone was aggrieved – almost defiant. “Is business so bad? I thought things had been so much better this month.”

“It’s the glass plant, Edith. We are having a lot of trouble. It takes every cent I can scrape together to meet expenses. We are a new concern. Our goods are not known. Competition is severe.

“We are trying to build up a new business. I can’t weaken on it now. Surely you can stand one more summer in the city – if I can. Perhaps, next year – ”

“Next year!” she cried. “It’s always next year. It’s been that way now for eight years, and about the only outing I’ve had has been a trip to Coney Island on the boat. I’m sick of it. It’s drudgery. A hired girl has more freedom that I have – and more money, too, for that matter.”

“Edith!”

“Oh, I know what you are going to say. I made my bed, and I ought to be willing to lie in it. I knew you were a poor man when I married you. Well, suppose I did. I didn’t mind poverty then – the enthusiasm of youth made it all seem a pleasure, like camping out, and living on canned beans and corn bread. It’s fine, for a time, but after a while, when the novelty has worn off, you get sort of tired of it. There comes a time in every married woman’s life when she sits down and looks at things from both sides, and wonders whether, after all, it’s really worth while.”

“I don’t see why you should complain, if I don’t,” said Donald wearily. “I’m sorry we haven’t more money, on your account and on my own, as well. There are many things I should like to do.”

“Oh, you’re a man.” Edith flung herself across the room and began turning over the sheets of music upon the piano. “If you have a couple of new suits of clothes a year and can smoke the kind of cigars you like, you don’t bother your head if some other man has a dozen suits and keeps a valet. It’s different with a woman. Home-made dresses, dollar corsets, riding in surface cars, seem mighty hard, when you see other women in their autos, their Russian sables, their Paris gowns – women who spend more money on their dogs every month than I have to spend on Bobbie. It’s a thousand times harder for a woman to be poor than it is for a man. Most men don’t know it, but that doesn’t alter the fact – it’s true, just the same.”

She suddenly sat down at the piano, and after striking a few discords, began to play the “Jewel Song” from “Faust” in a rapid tempo.

Donald followed her with his eyes. “It seems to me,” he said gravely, “that when a man wants to do so much for his wife and realizes that he can’t it’s the hardest of all – much harder than doing without things yourself.”

Edith did not speak for several moments.

“I don’t wonder Marguerite was tempted by the jewels, and all that,” she remarked, presently, then concluded her playing with a series of crashing chords, and rose from her seat with a harsh laugh.

“Edith, I wish you wouldn’t say such things.”

“Why shouldn’t I? Perhaps they are true. How do you know that I am not being tempted, too? I suppose, if the devil were to come along and offer me a million or two, I’d run away with him without stopping to pack my trunk.” She resumed her chair, and picked up her sewing again. “Go on with your writing, Donald. I’m sorry this discussion came up. It hasn’t done a bit of good. I suppose you think me heartless and unkind. I can’t help it. I’m not the first woman who has found married life a harder road than she had anticipated.”

She bent over her sewing with a sense of anger and annoyance with herself for having entered into such a purposeless discussion. Donald sat down at his desk and again took up his work. Only the ticking of the clock and the scratching of his pen broke the heavy silence. Life had once more resumed its monotonous procession.

After a long time, Edith put away her sewing, and retired to her bedroom. What sort of a life was this, she thought to herself, where one was forced to go to bed at ten o’clock because there was nothing further to keep one awake? She got into bed and read a magazine for an hour. Then she fell asleep. Donald was still writing.