“No, I don’t. But let it go at that. Let it go anyway. I’m not going to argue any more. You don’t love me and the only thing I don’t understand is why you didn’t find it out before we were married. Now—” Pawling hesitated. “When shall we actually—actually—”
The night air of early May was cool in the room and Carrol crossed over gracefully and stood before the open fire.
“I’d like to stay here until Mother gets back from Europe,” she said. “That’ll be two weeks and I can be packing up. Of course I can go tomorrow if you like but I’ve no place special to go.”
“Don’t think of going,” said Pawling hastily. “Stay right here. I’ll get out myself, first thing in the morning.”
“No. If that’s the way you feel I’ll do the getting out. I just thought if it didn’t annoy you to have me here—”
“Annoy me! Not a bit. Why—” He bit his lip. The whole reason for the separation was just that. Everything he did annoyed her terribly. He had given up the struggle to try to please her, several weeks ago.
“Of course you can stay here,” he continued formally. “I’ll move my junk out of the big room tonight.”
“It’s just for two weeks, you see.”
“Why, I’ll be de—” Again he broke off. He had been about to say delighted but he realized that it was not the right phrase. Nevertheless it would have been somewhere near the truth—his mind clutched at the thought of her staying here, if only for a fortnight. The separation was necessary, of course—but this brief interval when it was settled and yet not consummated would make the parting less harsh and violent at the end.
“Another thing,” said his wife. “Two things. First, I’ve invited some people for dinner tomorrow night—”
“All right.”
“—and second about the servants. Esther and Hilda are leaving in the morning and we’ll have to have somebody until—until Mother comes home. So I got a couple in town today.”
“Two. Naturally.”
“No, I mean a couple. It’s different. It’s a man and his wife. She cooks and he acts as butler and helps her with the housework. This couple look very good—he’s English and she’s Irish. I wouldn’t have taken them at all if I’d been sure we were separating—but since they’re coming—”
Her voice faded off and her eyes focussed on a spot in the center of the carpet.
“Of course,” muttered Pawling, looking at the same spot. He scarcely realized that she had stopped speaking and that there was silence in the room. He was thinking that in a few minutes he must go upstairs and, not in anger but only with what dignity was left to him, take his things out of the big front room—his brush and comb, the little box with his studs and cuff-buttons, the miscellaneous papers in his desk. Then his marriage would be over. Something would happen during the night when they each lay in their separate rooms, which would destroy forever the slim, mysterious hold they had had on each other, the intangible and half-vanished marriage of their hearts that had kept them from splitting up long before. In the morning they would each open their eyes upon a different world, conscious of having been apart and able to be apart forever.
Pawling got to his feet.
“I think I’ll go up now,” he said coolly.
“All right. I’ll lock the door.”
Half an hour later he turned out the light in the guest room and slipped into bed. Outside, the May night, cool and clear, brought back the memory of another Spring, a memory scratched and smeared in the recent months but in itself still a lovely and idyllic thing. He wondered if love ever came again with that intensity, with that gay magic of first love or if that was squandered now [and irrevocable] forever.
By and by he heard Carrol moving about below. The lights snapped and her footsteps fell on the stair. She walked very slowly as if she were tired and when she reached the top she rested for a minute just at the threshold of his room. Then she went into the big front chamber and closed the door after her and a heavy silence seemed to come in the window with the night air and settle through the house.
II
In the morning Pawling drove down to the station for the new servants, picking them out immediately from the crowd which disembarked from the ten o’clock train.
“Reynolds?”
The man, a middle-aged Briton with a long neck and a bland Cockney face, nodded profusely.
“Yes, sir—Reynolds.”
He turned to a large lady of Irish extraction who stood immediately behind him.
“This is my wife, sir. Her name is Katy.”
It seemed that there was a trunk. Reynolds went to inquire about it while Pawling and the large lady engaged in conversation upon the station platform—that is, Pawling remarked that it was a short trip out, and Katy nodded her head up and down in genial vibration.
“Been in this country long?” asked Pawling as they drove away from the station.
Reynolds nodded.
“Not very long,” Katy disagreed. “Maybe two months.”
“Work in New York?”
“No, we worked in Philadelphia—oh, for some very fine gentlemen there. Maybe you know them—Mr. Marbleton and Mr. Shafter?”
No, Pawling did not know them. He nodded understandingly, though, as if he knew how nice they must be.
Arrived at the house Pawling showed them the kitchen and hinted delicately that their rooms were just above. Then he left them to their own devices and strolled out on the front porch.
It was his vacation, this three weeks, the first in a year. It was convenient, of course, that his vacation should come now when the catastrophe of a divorce had overtaken him, yet he wished, in a way, that he had work to do. The melancholy of the affair would be accentuated by his inactivity—he could only sit through the soft May weather watching the days drift by that marked the ending of the unrepeatable adventure. He was glad of course that the last word had been said. Carrol’s arrogance, her coldness, her growing dislike for him, had been beyond endurance. He was short-tempered himself and many times in the last month their disputes had hovered on the verge of physical violence.
“Lou.”
He looked up to see her outside the porch screen in the bright sunshine.
“Hello,” he said, rising to let her in, “your couple came all right. They’re in the kitchen.”
“Thanks,” she said coolly, stepping up on the porch, her arms full of flowers. “I’ll go right back and see them.”
She was wearing, he noticed, a stiff starched dress of palest blue that she had not worn since the summer before. He looked at her closely to find signs of sleeplessness around her eyes, as he knew there were around his own, but she was as fresh and pink as the flowers in her arms.
“I’ve cut them for dinner,” she said. “Aren’t they lovely?”
“Very.”
Without looking at him she went into the house.
[They had luncheon at one and as he sat down he told himself that this must be his last luncheon with her. He must find some way of passing the days in town. He had no taste for a series of meals eaten in silence with downcast eyes.]
Luncheon was scrappy and unappetizing. It would be, of course—the new couple had not had time to get used to the kitchen. But he wondered whether Reynolds’ footsteps around the table were not unnaturally loud.
“They’re new,” said Carrol. “Everything’s mixed up back there. It’ll be different tonight.”
The dessert arrived, sliced peaches—in a sauce dish.
“This is all right for now, Reynolds,” said Carrol, “but for tonight of course I want the dessert served from a bowl.”
“What, Madam?”
“I say I want the dessert served from a bowl—you know, the blancmange I told you about.”
Reynolds nodded comprehendingly. He hesitated.
“Oh, and do you want me to cut the grass this afternoon?”
Carrol looked up in surprise.
“Why, yes—if you will. That is, perhaps you�
�d better wait till tomorrow.”
“What?”
“I say perhaps you’d better wait till tomorrow,” said Carrol in a slightly louder voice. “You’ll be pretty busy this afternoon, you know.”
Reynolds nodded and clumped into the pantry.
“He must be used to cutting the grass,” said Carrol. “That must be one of the duties couples have.” And she added in a low voice, “He seems to be a little deaf. I guess that’s why he’s so noisy when he walks.”
Their guests that night were three, the Harold Gays from Portchester, whom they knew only slightly, and Roderick Barker, an old beau of Carrol’s from New York.
Pawling found himself wondering if Barker, now when Carrol was free, would renew the courtship that his own had interrupted. He hoped not—not Barker at any rate; the idea of Carrol going places with Barker, of flirting with Barker, kissing Barker, appalled him—with an effort he drove the consideration from his mind.
“How’s Twine?” asked Barker.
Twine was a minute poodle with scanty wool and the eyes of one far gone in drink who was alternately dear and repugnant to Carrol’s heart.
“Twine’s great,” she answered, “He almost bit the new butler today. Oh, I forgot to tell you we have a butler now—aren’t we grand.”
“Well, this is absolutely the last word,” exclaimed Barker enthusiastically.
“He’s only part of a couple,” confessed Carrol, “but he’s straight from England, and you’ll have to admit that’s something.”
In a minute the gentleman referred to appeared in the doorway and announced in a loud singsong voice:
“Dinner is ready!”
All eyes turned toward him. The tone of the interruption was somewhat startling and everyone rose precipitately as if they had been summarily ordered from one room into the other. Carrol made a mental note to speak to him about his voice tomorrow.
“I’m going to send him out and have it lowered,” she remarked with an insincere facetiousness as they strolled in.
“Charming,” murmured Barker, smiling.
A dozen times during dinner remarks were made, careless, casual things that made Pawling aware that everything was changed. Someone’s divorce was discussed in detail, what “she” had said and how cruel “he” had been, a recital which included the details as to who the parties to the divorce “were going with now.”
“They say you two set an extraordinary example in Rye,” said Mrs. Gay genially, “You’re the only known couple who never quarrel in public under any conditions.”
“That’s the most dangerous kind,” remarked Barker, “It means they quarrel at home. It’s a vice like secret drinking. If married people don’t quarrel in public it’s because they can’t get the full flavor of brutality out of it unless they’re alone.”
Pawling and Carrol were both red as fire—the other three seemed to guess that something inept had been said and the subject shifted uneasily to golf.
The roast had been served according to Carrol’s instructions, already carved in the kitchen, and as dinner progressed, she rang the bell for the second serving. Dreading Reynolds’ resounding “What?” she caught his eye and nodded at her own plate. He nodded back and before she realized what he was doing he snatched it up and disappeared into the pantry. There was a faint, almost imperceptible lull in the conversation—one of those moments that might mean anything or nothing. Carrol saw Mrs. Gay’s eyes fall curiously upon her empty place.
Then the pantry door burst open and Reynolds stamped eagerly in. He was bringing back her plate. He had heaped it with roast and vegetables and he set it down with a sort of flourish before her as if to say:
“There. Look what I did for you.”
There was no hoping that this would pass unnoticed. Carrol was pink with embarrassment and her ears were privy to a short, repressed snicker to which each of the three men contributed a part.
“Serve everything again, Reynolds,” she said impatiently.
“What?” He craned his long neck; his mouth was ajar in polite inquiry.
“Serve everything again.”
Her one thought now was to get through dinner with as little emphasis as possible upon the service.
“Please find us a house in Portchester,” she said quickly to Mrs. Gay. “We’re going to live there next summer.”
She met her husband’s eyes over the table and the inexpediency of her remark appalled her but she rambled nervously on—“At least perhaps we are and perhaps we’ll go to Europe and perhaps we’ll be dead.”
Luckily or unluckily Reynolds was excited now at his former blunder and determined at this point to make up for it by seeing that everyone had enough to eat.
“What?” he remarked to Mrs. Gay. “No asparagus?”
The irrepressible and, to Carrol, faintly ghastly laughter which ensued fell inaudibly upon his ears.
The man was apparently deaf as a post. Clump! Clump! Clump! went his footsteps, around the table and in and out of the pantry, interrupting the conversation, giving the impression, somehow, that pans were clanking and hammering was going on and china was continually crashing on the floor.
After luncheon Carrol had explained to him in detail about the dessert. He must take a dessert plate, she said, and on it place a doily and a finger bowl. The person served would himself remove the doily and the finger bowl.
All this had become very confused in Reynolds’ mind. He knew how the plate and doily and finger bowl should look upon the table and he had a confused impression that something was going to be removed. How or why he did not know. But he was a resourceful man.
Just when the conversation had regained a certain animation he entered with the blancmange, advanced upon Carrol and after a moment’s hesitation reached down and snatched away her finger-bowl. Then before she realized his intention he had spooned a large “order” of blancmange onto the linen doily. Without tarrying he stamped around to Barker and repeated the performance. Mrs. Gay with great presence of mind managed to remove the doily from her plate—the others gazed down in awe upon the vision of a wet linen dessert.
“If anyone wants any more,” said Reynolds to his mistress in a confidential shout, “there’s a lot of this in the kitchen.”
III
The time was so short, twelve days now, that they decided next morning not to let the couple go. Once the dinner guests had departed it seemed to Pawling a vastly unimportant matter in comparison with the imminence of their separation. Not that he had ceased to desire the separation—far from it—he was more reconciled to it than he had been when it was agreed upon, but set in the cool tranquillity which succeeded the passionate quarrels of the last three months it seemed a grave and consequent matter.
Pawling went up to town early and spent the day at the Yale Club, feeling out of place among the younger men there, feeling older even than his classmates and already a little smirched in the light of his coming divorce. He looked forward in a way to his freedom. He could read and travel more, he would be away from the pressure of Carrol’s high-strung, nervous temperament—but he could never be a bachelor again in quite the same way. It would be almost indecent of him to consider himself absolutely free.
When evening came he saw no reason why he should go back to the country. He could sleep at the Club and spend another day in town. But as the time drew near for the last afternoon train he knew he would go. The notion of Carrol alone in the house with two strange servants made him uneasy.
His presentiment was justified. As he let himself in he saw her sitting on the sofa with Twine in her lap, staring straight in front of her with angry eyes.
“You’ll have to let these people go,” she said immediately. “They’re awful. We couldn’t possibly stand them for two weeks.”
“Why? What have they done now?”
“Well, in the first place they gave me an awful lunch and when I went in the kitchen and started to complain, that woman gave me an awful look as if she was going to bang me
over the head with the saucepan. I was sort of afraid to say anything. The man’s even worse.”
“I’ll speak to them.”
“Something else too—they whipped Twine.”
“Whipped Twine?” he asked incredulously. “What for?”
“Nothing. They said he bit the man—‘Mr. Reynolds,’ his wife calls him—but if he did they must have started it because Twine never bites anybody. Anyways I caught them beating him.”
“What did you do?”
“I was afraid to do anything. That woman kept muttering around so and Reynolds was stamping up and down in the kitchen as if he’d been attacked by a grizzly bear. I picked up Twine and walked right in here and I’ve been in here ever since.”
“Hm!” ejaculated Pawling. “I’ll fire them right after dinner.”
Dinner was uneatable. Carrol sat with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands and shook her head curtly whenever a dish was offered her. When dinner was over Pawling pushed open the pantry door.
“Reynolds!” he called.
“Yes, sir.”
As if he had been waiting for the call Reynolds burst out of the kitchen with aggressive alacrity.
“Reynolds, I’m afraid we don’t suit each other and we’d better not try it any longer.”
Reynolds looked at him blankly. Obviously he had not heard a word.
“I said,” repeated Pawling, “that perhaps we don’t suit each other and we better not try this any longer.”
Reynolds nodded.
“Oh, you suit us all right,” he announced, craning his long neck and looking down fatuously at Pawling.
“But you don’t suit us,” went on Pawling impatiently, “And I think we’d better—”
“What’s the matter with me?” demanded Reynolds. “Has the madam been complaining of me?”
“We’ll leave the madam out of this.”
“Why don’t we suit you?”
“Because we want an experienced butler. We’re paying you a big salary and we want someone who’s trained.”
“They can’t even make the beds,” said Carrol. She had come into the dining room and was standing at his elbow. “I looked at mine this afternoon and it was just pulled back, nothing but wrinkles—I had to make it all over again.”
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