XVI
Until very recently indeed psychology was not an ology at all but anindefinite something or other "up in the air," the sport of the windsand fogs of transcendental tommy rot. Now, however, science has drawn itdown, has fitted it in its proper place as a branch of physiology. Andwe are beginning to have a clearer understanding of the thoughts and thethought-producing actions of ourselves and our fellow beings. Soon itwill be no longer possible for the historian and the novelist, thedramatist, the poet, the painter or sculptor to present in allseriousness as instances of sane human conduct, the aberrationsresulting from various forms of disease ranging from indigestion in itsmild, temper-breeding forms to acute homicidal or suicidal mania. Inthat day of greater enlightenment a large body of now much esteemed artwill become ridiculous. Practically all the literature of strenuouspassion will go by the board or will be relegated to the medical librarywhere it belongs; and it, and the annals of violence found in the dailynewspapers of our remote time will be cited as documentary proof of thelow economic and hygienic conditions prevailing in that almost barbarousperiod. For certain it is that the human animal when healthy and wellfed is invariably peaceable and kindly and tolerant--up to the limits ofselfishness, and even encroaching upon those limits.
Of writing rubbish about love and passion there is no end--and will beno end until the venerable traditional nonsense about those interestingemotions shares the fate that should overtake all the cobwebs ofignorance thickly clogging the windows and walls of the human mind. Ofall the fiddle-faddle concerning passion probably none is moreshudderingly admired than the notion that one possessed of anoverwhelming desire for another longs to destroy that other. It is truethere is a form of murderous mania that involves practically all theemotions, including of course the passions--which are as readily subjectto derangement as any other part of the human organism. But passion initself--even when it is so powerful that it dominates the whole life, asin the case of Frederick Norman--passion in itself is not a form ofmental derangement in the medical sense. And it does not produce acuteselfishness, paranoiac egotism, but a generous and beautiful kind ofunselfishness. Not from the first moment of Fred Norman's possession didhe wish to injure or in any way to make unhappy the girl he loved. Helonged to be happy with her, to have her happy with and through him. Herepresented his plotting to himself as a plan to make her happier thanshe ever had been; as for ultimate consequences, he refused to considerthem. The most hardened rake, when passion possesses him, wishes allhappiness to the woman of his pursuit. Indifference, coldness--thenatural hard-heartedness of the normal man--returns only when theinspiration and elevation of passion disappear in satiety. The man orthe woman who continues to inspire passion continues to inspiretenderness and considerateness.
So when Norman left Dorothy that Sunday afternoon, he, being a normal ifsore beset human being, was soon in the throes of an agonized remorse.There may have been some hypocrisy in it, some struggling to cover upthe baser elements in his infatuation for her. What human emotion ofupward tendency has not at least a little of the varnish of hypocrisy oncertain less presentable spots in it? But in the main it was acreditable, a manly remorse, and not altogether the writhings ofjealousy and jealous fear of losing her.
He saw clearly that she was telling the truth, and telling it toogently, when she said he was responsible for her having standards ofliving which she could not unaided hope to attain. It is a dreadfulthing to interfere in the destiny of a fellow being. We do it all thetime; we do it lightly. Nevertheless, it is a dreadful thing--not onethat ought not to be done, but one that ought to be done only underimperative compulsion, and then with every precaution. He had interferedin Dorothy Hallowell's destiny. He had lifted her out of the dim obscureniche where she was ensconced in comparative contentment. He had liftedher up where she had seen and felt the pleasures of a life of luxury.
"But for me," he said to himself, "she would now be marrying this pooryoung lawyer, or some chap of the same sort, and would be lookingforward to a life of happiness in a little flat or suburban cottage."
If she should refuse his offer--what then? Clearly he ought to do hisbest to help her to happiness with the other man. He smiled cynically atthe moral height to which his logic thus pointed the way. Nevertheless,he did not turn away but surveyed it--and there formed in his mind animpulse to make an effort to attempt that height, if Fate should ruleagainst him with her. "If I were a really decent man," thought he, "I'dsit down now and write her that I would not marry her but would give heryoung man a friendly hand in the law if she wished to marry him." But heknew that such utter generosity was far beyond him. "Only a hero coulddo it," said he; he added with what a sentimentalist might have called areturn of his normal cynicism, "only a hero who really in the bottom ofhis heart didn't especially want the girl." And a candid person ofexperience might possibly admit that there was more truth than cynicismin his look askance at the grand army of martyrs of renunciation, mostof whom have simply given up something they didn't really want.
"If she accepts me, I'll make it impossible for her not to be happy," hesaid to himself, in all the fine unselfishness of passion--not divineunselfishness but human--not the kind we read about and pretend tohave--and get a savage attack of bruised vanity if we are accused of nothaving it--no, but just the kind we have and show in our dailylives--the unselfishness of longing to make happy those whom it wouldmake us happier to see happy. "She may think she cares for this youngclerk--" so ran his thoughts--"but she doesn't know her own mind. Whenshe is mine, I'll take her in hand as a gardener does a delicate rareflower--and, by Heaven, how I shall make her blossom and bloom!"
It would hardly be possible for a human being to pass a stormier nightthan was that night of his. Alternations between hope anddespair--fantastic pictures of future with and without her, wildpleadings with her--those delirious transports to which our imaginationsgive way if we happen to be blessed and cursed with imaginations--in thesecurity of the darkness and aloneness of night and bed. And through itall he was tormented body and soul by her loveliness--her hair, herskin, her eyes, the shy, slender graces of her form--He tossed aboutuntil his bed was so wildly disheveled that he had to rise and remakeit.
When day came and the first mail, there was her letter on the salver ofthe boy entering the room. He reached for it with eager, trembling arm,drew back. "Put it on the table," he said.
The boy left. He was alone. Leaning upon his elbow in the bed he staredat the letter with hollow, terrified eyes. It contained his destiny. Ifshe accepted, he would go up, for his soul sickness would be cured. Ifshe refused, he would cease to struggle. He rose, took from a lockeddrawer a bottle of rye whisky. He poured a tall glass--the kind called abar glass--half full, drank it straight down without a pause or aquiver. The shock brought him up standing. He looked and acted like hisformer self as he went to the table, took the letter, opened it, andread:
"I am willing to marry you, if you really want me. I am so tired of struggling, and I don't see anything but dark ahead.--D. H."
Norman struggled over to the bed, threw himself down, flat upon hisback, arms and legs extended wide and whole body relaxed. He felt theblood whirl up into his brain like the great red and black tongues offlame and smoke in a conflagration, and then he slept soundly untilnearly one o'clock.
To an outsider there would have been a world of homely commonplacepathos in that little letter of the girl's if read aright, that is tosay, if read with what was between the lines supplied. It is impossibleto live in cities any length of time and with any sort of eyes withoutlearning the bitter unromantic truths about poverty--city poverty. Inquiet, desolate places one may be poor, very poor, without muchconscious suffering. There are no teasing contrasts, no torturingtemptations. But in a city, if one knows anything at all of thepossibilities of civilized life, of the joys and comforts of good food,clothing, and shelter, of theater and concert and excursion, ofentertaining and being entertained, poverty becomes a hell. In thecountry, in the quiet t
owns, the innocent people wonder at thegreediness of the more comfortable kinds of city people, at their loveof money, their incessant dwelling upon it, their reverence for thosewho have it, their panic-like flight from those who have it not. Theywonder how folk, apparently human, can be so inhuman. Let them becareful how they judge. If you discover any human being anywhere actingas you think a human being should not, investigate all thecircumstances, look thoroughly into all the causes of his or herconduct, before you condemn him or her as inhuman, unworthy of yourkinship and your sympathy.
In her brief letter the girl showed that, young though she was and notwidely experienced in life, she yet had seen the horrors of citypoverty, how it poisons and kills all the fine emotions. She had seenmany a loving young couple start out confidently, with a few hundreddollars of debt for furniture--had seen the love fade and wither,shrivel, die--had seen appear peevishness and hatred and unfaithfulnessand all the huge, foul weeds that choke the flowers of married life. Sheknew what her lover's salary would buy--and what it would not buy--fortwo. She could imagine their fate if there should be three or more. Sheshowed frankly her selfishness of renunciation. But there could be readbetween the lines--concealed instead of vaunted--perhapsunsuspected--her unselfishness of renunciation for the sake of her loverand for the sake of the child or the children that might be. In our loveof moral sham and glitter, we overlook the real beauties of humanmorality; we even are so dim or vulgar sighted that we do not see themwhen they are shown to us.
As Norman awakened, he reached for the telephone, said to the boy incharge of the club exchange: "Look in the book, find the number of alawyer named Branscombe, and connect me with his office." After someconfusion and delay he got the right office, but Dorothy was out atlunch. He left a message that she was to call him up at the club as soonas she came in. He was shaving when the bell rang.
He was at the receiver in a bound. "Is it you?" he said.
"Yes," came in her quiet, small voice.
"Will you resign down there to-day? Will you marry me this afternoon?"
A brief silence, then--"Yes."
Thus it came about that they met at the City Hall license bureau, gottheir license, and half an hour later were married at the house of aminister in East Thirty-third Street, within a block of the Subwaystation. He was feverish, gay, looked years younger than histhirty-seven. She was quiet, dim, passive, neither grave nor gay, butgoing through her part without hesitation, with much the same patient,plodding expression she habitually bore as she sat working at hermachine--as if she did not quite understand, but was doing her best andhoped to get through not so badly.
"I've had nothing to eat," said he as they came out of the parsonage.
"Nor I," said she.
"We'll go to Delmonico's," said he, and hailed a passing taxi.
On the way, he sitting in one corner explained to her, shrunk into theother corner: "I can confess now that I married you under falsepretenses. I am not prosperous, as I used to be. To be brief and plain,I'm down and out, professionally."
She did not move. Apparently she did not change expression. Yet he,speaking half banteringly, felt some frightful catastrophe within her."You are--poor?" she said in her usual quiet way.
"_We_ are poor," corrected he. "I have at present only a thousand dollarsa month--a little more, but not enough to talk about."
She did not move or change expression. Yet he felt that her heart, herblood were going on again.
"Are you--angry?" he asked.
"A thousand dollars a month seems an awful lot of money to me," shesaid.
"It's nothing--nothing to what we'll soon have. Trust me." And back intohis eyes flashed their former look. "I've been sick. I'm well again. Ishall get what I want. If you want anything, you've only to ask for it.I'll get it. I know how. . . . I don't prey, myself--I've no fancy forthe brutal sports. But I teach lions how to prey, and I make them payfor the lessons." He laughed with an effervescing of young vitality andself-confidence that made him look handsome and powerful. "In the futurethey'll have to pay still higher prices."
She was looking at him with weary, wondering, pathetic eyes that gazedfrom the pallor of her dead-white face mysteriously.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"I was listening," replied she.
"Doesn't it make you happy--what you are going to have?"
"No," replied she. "But it makes me content."
With eyes suddenly suffused, he took her hand--so gently. "Dorothy," hesaid, "you will try to love me?"
"I'll try," said she. "You'll be kind to me?"
"I couldn't be anything else," he cried. And in a gust of passion hecaught her to his breast and kissed her triumphantly. "I love you--andyou're mine--mine!"
She released herself with the faint insistent push that seemed weak, butalways accomplished its purpose. Her lip was trembling. "You said you'dbe kind," she murmured.
He gazed at her with a baffled expression. "Oh--I understand," he said."And I shall be kind. But I must teach you to love me."
Her trembling lip steadied. "You must be careful or you may teach me tohate you," said she.
He studied her in a puzzled way, laughed. "What a mystery you are!" hecried with raillery. "Are you child or are you woman? No matter. Weshall be happy."
The taxicab was swinging to the curb. In the restaurant he ordered anenormous meal. And he ate enormously, and drank in due proportion. Sheate and drank a good deal herself--a good deal for her. And the resultswere soon apparent in a return of the spirits that are normal totwenty-one years, regardless of what may be lurking in the heart, in adark corner, to come forth and torment when there is nothing to distractthe attention.
"We shall have to live quietly for a while," said he. "Of course youmust have clothes-at once. I'll take you shopping to-morrow." He laughedgrimly. "Just at present we can get only what we pay cash for. Still,you won't need much. Later on I'll take you over to Paris. Does thatattract you?"
Her eyes shone. "How soon?" she asked.
"I can tell you in a week or ten days." He became abstracted for amoment. "I can't understand how I let them get me down so easily--thatis, I can't understand it now. I suppose it's just the differencebetween being weak with illness and strong with health." His eyesconcentrated on her. "Is it really you?" he cried gaily. "And are youreally mine? No wonder I feel strong! It was always that way with me. Inever could leave a thing until I had conquered it."
She gave him a sweet smile. "I'm not worth all the trouble you seem tohave taken about me," said she.
He laughed; for he knew the intense vanity so pleasantly hidden beneathher shy and modest exterior. "On the contrary," said he good-humoredly,"you in your heart think yourself worth any amount of trouble. It's ahabit we men have got you women into. And you--One of the many thingsthat fascinate me in you is your supreme self-control. If the king wereto come down from his throne and fall at your feet, you'd take it as amatter of course."
She gazed away dreamily. And he understood that her indifference tomatters of rank and wealth and power was not wholly vanity but was, inpart at least, due to a feeling that love was the only essential. Nordid he wonder how she was reconciling this belief of high and puresentiment with what she was doing in marrying him. He knew that humanbeings are not consistent, cannot be so in a universe that compels themto face directly opposite conditions often in the same moment. But justas all lines are parallel in infinity, so all actions are profoundlyconsistent when referred to the infinitely broad standard of thenecessity that every living thing shall look primarily to its own wellbeing. Disobedience to this fundamental carries with it inevitablepunishment of disintegration and death; and those catastrophes areserious matters when one has but the single chance at life, that will berepeated never again in all the eternities.
After their late lunch or early dinner, they drove to her lodgings. Hewent up with her and helped her to pack--not a long process, as she hadfew belongings. He noted that the stockings and underclothes sh
e tookfrom the bureau drawers were in anything but good condition, that thehalf dozen dresses she took from the closet and folded on the couch wereabout done for. Presently she said, cheerfully and with no trace offalse shame:
"You see, I'm pretty nearly in rags."
"Oh, that's soon arranged," replied he. "Why bother to take thesethings? Why not give them to the maid?"
She debated with herself. "I think you're right," she decided. "Yes,I'll give them to Jennie."
"The underclothes, too," he urged. "And the hats."
It ended in her having left barely enough loosely to fill the bottom ofa small trunk with two trays.
They drove to the Knickerbocker Hotel, and he took a small suite, one ofthe smallest and least luxurious in the house, for with all his desireto make her feel the contrast of her change of circumstances sharply, hecould not forget how limited his income was, and how unwise it would beto have to move in a few days to humbler quarters. He hoped that therooms, englamoured by the hotel's general air of costly luxury, wouldsufficiently impress her. And while she gave no strong indication butaccepted everything in her wonted quiet, passive manner, he was shrewdenough to see that she was content. "To-morrow," he said to himself,"after she has done some shopping, the last regret will leave her, andher memory of that clerk will begin to fade fast. I'll give her too muchelse to think about."
* * * * *
The following morning, when they faced each other at breakfast in theirsitting room, he glanced at her from time to time in wonder and terror.She looked not merely insignificant, but positively homely. Her skin hada sickly pallor; her hair seemed to be of many different anddisagreeable shades of uninteresting dead yellow. Her eyes suggestedfaded blue china dishes, with colorless lashes and reddened edges of thelids. Her lips had lost their rosy freshness, her teeth their sparklingwhiteness.
His heavy heart seemed to be resting nauseously upon the pit of hisstomach. Was his infatuation sheer delusion, with no basis of charm inher at all? Was she, indeed, nothing but this unattractive, faded littlecommonplaceness?--a poor specimen of an inferior order of working girl?What an awakening! And she was his _wife_!--was his companion for the yetmore brilliant career he had resolved and was planning! He mustintroduce her everywhere, must see the not to be concealed amazement inthe faces of his acquaintances, must feel the cruel covert laughter andjeering at his weak folly! Was there ever in history or romance aparallel to such fatuity as his? Why, people would be right in thinkinghim a sham, a mere bluffer at the high and strong qualities he wasreputed to have.
Had Norman been, in fact, the man of ice and iron the compulsions of acareer under the social system made him seem, the homely girl oppositehim that morning would speedily have had something to think about otherthan her unhappiness of the woman who has given her person to one manand her heart to another. Instead, the few words he addressed to herwere all gentleness and forbearance. Stronger than his chagrin was hispity for her--the poor, unconscious victim of his mad hallucination.If she thought about the matter at all, she assumed that he was stillthe slave of her charms--for, the florid enthusiasm of man's passioninevitably deludes the woman into fancying it objective instead ofwholly subjective; and, only the rare very wise woman, after muchexperience, learns to be suspicious of the validity of her own charmsand to concentrate upon keeping up the man's delusions.
At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gentlyon her shoulder--what a difference between those caresses and thecaresses that had made her beg him to be "kind" to her! Said he:
"Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while? I ought to go to the cluband have the rest of my things packed and sent. I'll not be gonelong--about an hour."
"Very well," said she lifelessly.
"I'll telephone my office that I'll not be down to-day."
With an effort she said, "There's no reason for doing that. I don't wantto interfere with your business."
"I'm neglecting nothing. And that shopping must be done."
She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height lookeddown and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her amoment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.
It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage toreturn. He had been hoping--had been saying to himself with vigorouseffort at confidence--that he had simply seen one more of the manytransformations, each of which seemed to present her as a whollydifferent personality. When he should see her again, she would havewiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, wouldappear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent overhis senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished thathope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had beencrying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness. Hedid not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:
"It'll not take you long to get ready?"
She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back."Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.
"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic thanit would have been had his sympathy been genuine.
"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And notvery--not very----"
"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.
"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a--a dreadfulmistake."
"Evidently she had been crying."]
He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would havecaused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the factthat while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinkingonly of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiarhabit of the sex, bred of man's assiduous cultivation of its egotism. Hesaid: "Oh, you'll feel differently about it later. Let's get some freshair and see what the shops have to offer."
A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I--if Ididn't--go on?"
"You mean, if you left me?"
She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, butas he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable,a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled upin him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain andfilling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felthimself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in itssolemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.
He said: "My dear--you mustn't decide anything so important to you in ahurry."
A tremor passed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve inhysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysteriousself-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said inher dim, quiet way:
"It seems to me I just can't stay on."
"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"
He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things oftenamuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amusedby noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out ofconsideration for _his_ feelings! He said with a kind of paternaltenderness:
"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you--sothat you needn't worry about money. But I feel that, as I am older thanyou, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you mightsoon regret."
She studied him dubiously. He saw that she--naturally enough--did notbelieve in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of hischange, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:
"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to--to be kindto me."
There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satiricalself-mockery and amusement at her innocent young egotism it concealed!"You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.
"I--can--trust you?" she said.
"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into thissuite. Would you
like that?"
"If you--if you don't mind."
He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now--let's go shopping. Let'samuse ourselves."
She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her armsround his neck and kissed him.
"You are _so_ good to me!" she cried. "And I'm not a bit nice."
He did not try to detain her, but sent her to finish dressing, with anencouraging pat on the shoulder and a cheerful, "Don't worry aboutyourself--or me."
The Grain of Dust: A Novel Page 16