“You like to travel. Why don’t you do it? I don’t care to be the subject of gossip; and I shall be — am, no doubt, already, — because you are making the situation too plain and too public.
“It’s well enough for one’s friends to surmise the condition of affairs; no unpleasantness for me results. But let it once become newspaper gossip and my situation among people I most earnestly desire to cultivate would become instantly precarious and perhaps impossible.
“It is not necessary for me to inform you what is the very insecure status of an American woman here, particularly in view of the Court’s well known state of mind concerning marital irregularities.
“The King’s views coincide with the Queen’s. And the Queen’s are perfectly well known.
“If you continue your exploring expeditions, which you evidently like to engage in, and if you report here at intervals for the sake of appearances, I can get on very well and very comfortably. But if you settle in New York and engage in business there, and continue to remain away from this country where you are popularly supposed to maintain residences in town and country, I shall certainly begin to experience very disagreeably the consequences of your selfish conduct.
“Your reply to my last letter has thoroughly incensed me.
“You always have been selfish. From the time I had the misfortune to marry you I had to suffer from your selfish, self-centred, demonstrative, and rather common character — until you finally learned that demonstration is offensive to decent breeding, and that, although I happened to be married to you, I intended to keep to my own notions of delicacy, reserve, privacy, and self-respect.
“Of course you thought it a sufficient reason for us to have children merely because you once thought you wanted them; and I shall not forget what was your brutal attitude toward me when I told you very plainly that I refused to be saddled with the nasty, grubby little brats. Evidently you are incapable of understanding any woman who is not half animal.
“I did not desire children, and that ought to have been sufficient for you. I am not demonstrative toward anybody; I leave that custom to my servants. And is it any crime if the things that interest and appeal to you do not happen to attract me?
“And I’ll tell you now that your subjects of conversation always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care for what you so smugly designate as ‘the things of the mind’ and ‘things worth while.’ I am no hypocrite: I like well bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but their poise and freedom from demonstration are most agreeable to me.
“You politely designated them as fools, and what they said you characterised as piffle. You had the exceedingly bad taste to sneer at various members of an ancient and established aristocracy — people who by inheritance from generations of social authority, require no toleration from such a man as you.
“These are the people who are my friends; among whom I enjoy an established position. This position you now threaten by coolly going into business in New York. In other and uglier words you advertise to the world that you have abandoned your home and wife.
“Of course I cannot help it if you insist on doing this common and disgraceful thing.
“And I suppose, considering the reigning family’s attitude toward divorce, that you believe me to be at your mercy.
“Permit me to inform you that I am not. If, in a certain set, wherein I now have the entrée, divorce is not tolerated, — at any rate where the divorced wife of an American would not be received, — nevertheless there are other sets as desirable, perhaps even more desirable, and which enjoy a prestige as weighty.
“And I’ll tell you now that in case you persist in affronting me by remaining in business in New York, I shall be forced to procure a separation — possibly a divorce. And I shall not suffer for it socially as no doubt you think I will.
“There is only one reason why I have not done so already — disinclination to be disturbed in a social milieu which suits me. It’s merely the inconvenience of a transfer to another equally agreeable set.
“But if your selfish conduct forces me to make the change, don’t doubt for one minute, my friend, that I’m entirely capable and able to accomplish it without any detriment or anything worse than some slight inconvenience to myself.
“Whether it be a separation or a divorce I have not yet made up my mind.
“There is only one reason why I should hesitate and that is the thought that possibly you might be glad of your freedom. If I were sure of that I’d punish you by asking for a separation. But I do not suppose it really matters to you. I think I know you well enough to know that you have no desire to marry again. And, as for the young woman in whose company you made yourself notorious before we were engaged — well, I think you would hesitate to offer her marriage, or even, perhaps, the not unprecedented privilege of being your chère amie. I do you the honour of believing you too fastidious to select a public fortune teller for your mistress, or to parade a cheap trance-medium as a specimen of your personal taste in pulchritude.
“Meanwhile your attitude in domestic matters continues to annoy me. Be good enough to let me know, definitely, what you propose to do, so that I may take proper measures to protect myself — because I have always been obliged to protect myself from you and your vulgar notions ever since my mother and yours made a fool of me.
“Winifred Stuart Bailey.”
With his care-worn eyes still fixed on the written pages he rested his elbow on the table and dropped his head on his hand, heavily.
Rain swept the windows; the wind also was rising; his room seemed to be full of sounds; even the clock which had a subdued tick and a most discreet manner of announcing the passing of time, seemed noisy to him.
“God! what a mess I’ve made of life,” he said aloud. For a moment a swift anger burned fiercely against the woman who had written him; then the flame of it blew against himself, scorching him with the wrath of self-contempt.
“Hell!” he said between his teeth. “It isn’t the fault of that little girl across the ocean. It’s my fault, mine, and the fault of nobody else.”
Indecision, the weakness of a heart easily appealed to, the irresolution of a man who was not man enough to guard and maintain his own freedom of action and the right to live his own life — these had encompassed the wrecking of him.
It seemed that he was at least man enough to admit it, generous enough to concede it, even if perhaps it was not altogether true.
But never once had he permitted himself, even for a second, to censure the part played by his mother in the catastrophe. That he had been persuaded, swerved, over-ridden, dominated, was his own fault.
The boy had been appealed to, subtly, cleverly, on his most vulnerable side; he had been bothered and badgered and beset. Two women, clever and hard as nails, had made up their minds to the marriage; the third remained passive, indifferent, but acquiescent. Wiser, firmer, and more experienced men than Clive had surrendered earlier. Only the memory of Athalie held him at all; — some vague, indefinite hope may have remained that somehow, somewhere, sometime, either the world’s attitude might change or he might develop the courage to ignore it and to seek his happiness where it lay and let the world howl.
That is probably all that held him at all. And after a while the constant pressure snapped that thread. This was the result.
He lifted his head and stared, heavy-eyed, at his wife’s letter. Then, dropping the sheets to the floor he turned and laid both arms upon the table and buried his face in them.
Toward morning his servant discovered him there, asleep.
CHAPTER XXII
THE following day Clive replied to his wife by cable: “As it seems to make no unpleasant difference to you I have concluded to remain in New York. Please take whatever steps you may find most convenient and agreeable for yourself.”
And, following this he wrote her:
“I am inexpressibly sorry to cause
you any new annoyance and to arouse once more your just impatience and resentment. But I see no use in a recapitulation of my shortcomings and of your own many disappointments in the man you married.
“Please remember that I have always assumed all blame for our marriage; and that I shall always charge myself with it. I have no reply to make to your reproaches, — no defence; I was not in love with you when I married you — which is as serious an offence as any man can perpetrate toward any woman. And I do not now blame you for a very natural refusal to tolerate anything approaching the sympathy and intimacy that ought to exist between husband and wife.
“I did entertain a hazy idea that affection and perhaps love might be ultimately possible even under the circumstances of such a marriage as ours; and in a youthful, ignorant, and inexperienced way I attempted to bring it about. My notions of our mutual obligations were very vague and indefinite.
“Please believe I did not realise how utterly distasteful any such ideas were to you, and how deep was your personal disinclination for the man you married.
“I understand now how many mistakes I made before I finally rid you of myself, and gave you a chance to live your life in your own way unharassed by the interference of a young, ignorant, and probably aggressive man.
“Your aversion to motherhood was, after all, your own affair. Man has no right to demand that of woman. I took a very bullying and intolerant attitude toward you — not, as I now realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because I liked and wanted children, and also because I was influenced by the cant of the hour — the fashion being to demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quantitative reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old Testament, is more stupid than such a doctrine; no child should ever be born unwelcome to both parents.
“I am sorry I could not find your circle of friends interesting. I sometimes think I might have, had you and I been mutually sympathetic. But the situation was impossible; our ideas, interests, convictions, tastes, were radically at variance; we had absolutely nothing in common to build on. What marriage ties could endure the strain of such conditions? The fault was mine, Winifred; I am sorry for you.
“I don’t know much about anything, but, thinking as clearly and as impersonally as it is in me to think, I begin to believe that divorce, far from deserving the stigma attached to it, is a step forward in civilisation.
“Perhaps it may be only a temporary substitute for something better — say for more wholesome and more honest social conditions where the proposition for mating and the selection of a mate may lie as freely with your sex as with mine.
“Until then I know of nothing more honest and more sensible than to undo the wrong that ignorance and inexperience has accomplished. No woman’s moral or spiritual salvation is dependent upon her wearing the fetters of a marriage abhorred. Such a stupid sacrifice is unthinkable to modesty and decency, and is repulsive to common sense. And any god who is supposed to demand that of humanity is not the true God, but is as grotesque and false as any African idol or any deity ever worshipped by Puritan or Pagan or by any orthodox assassin of free minds since the first murder was perpetrated on account of creed.
“You are entitled to divorce. I don’t know whether I am or not, having done this thing. Nobody likes to endure unhappy consequences. I don’t. But it was my own doing and I have no ground for complaint.
“You, however, have. You ought to be free of me. Of course, I’d be very glad to have my freedom; I shall not lie about it; but the difference is that you deserve yours and I don’t. But I’ll be very grateful if you care to give it to me.
“Don’t write any more bitterly than you can help. I don’t believe it really affords you any satisfaction; and it depresses me more than you could realise. I know only too well what I have been and wherein I have failed so miserably. Let me forget it whenever I can, Winifred. And if, for me, there remains any chance, any outlook, be generous enough to let me try to take it.
“Your husband,
“C. Bailey.”
The consequences of this letter did not seem to be very fortunate. There came a letter from her so bitter and menacing that a cleverer man might have read in it enough of menace between the lines to forearm him with caution at least.
But Clive merely read it once and destroyed it and tried to forget it.
It was not until some time afterward that, gradually, some instinct in him awoke suspicion. But for a long while he was not perfectly sure that he was being followed.
However, when he could no longer doubt it, and when the lurking figures and faces of at least two of the men who dogged him everywhere had become sufficiently familiar to him, he wrote a short note to his wife asking for an explanation.
But he got none — principally because his wife had already sailed.
The effect of Winifred’s letters on an impressionable, sensitive, and self-distrustful character, was never very quickly effaced.
Whatever was morbid in the man became apparent after he had received such letters, and took the form of a quiet withdrawal from the circles which he affected, until such time as mortification and shame had subsided.
He had written briefly to Athalie saying that business would take him out of town for a few weeks. Which it did as a matter of fact, landing him at Spring Pond, Long Island, where he completed the purchase of the Greensleeve tavern and took title in his own name.
Old Ledlie had died; his only heir appeared to be glad enough to sell; the title was free and clear; the possibilities of the place fascinating.
Clive prowled around the place in two minds whether he might venture to call in a local builder and have him strip the protuberances from the house, which was all that was necessary to restore it to its original form; or whether he ought to leave that for Athalie to manage.
But there remained considerable to be done; May was in full bud and blossom already; and if Athalie was to enjoy the place at all that summer it ought to be made livable.
So Clive summoned several people to his aid with the following quick results: A New York general contractor took over the entire job guaranteeing quick results or forfeiture. A local nurseryman and an emergency gang started in. They hedged the entire front with privet for immediate effect, cleared, relocated, and restored the ancient flower garden on its quaint original lines; planted its borders thickly with old time perennials, peonies, larkspurs, hollyhocks, clove pinks, irises, and lilies; replanted the rose beds with old-fashioned roses, set the wall beds with fruit trees and gay annuals, sodded, trimmed, raked, levelled, cleaned up, and pruned, until the garden was a charming and logical thing.
Fortunately the newness was not apparent because the old stucco walls remained laden with wistaria and honeysuckle, and the alley of ancient box trees required clipping only.
In the centre of the lawn he built a circular pool and piped the water from Spring Brook. It fell in a slender jet, icy cold, powdering pool, basin and grass with spray.
Where half-dead locust and cedar trees had to be felled Clive set tall arbor vitæ and soft maples. He was an expensive young man where Athalie’s pleasure was concerned; and as he worked there in the lovely May weather his interest and enthusiasm grew with every fresh fragrant spadeful of brown earth turned.
The local building genius repainted the aged house after bay window and gingerbread had been stripped from its otherwise dignified facade; replaced broken slates on the roof, mended the great fat chimneys, matched the traces of pale bluish-green that remained on the window shutters, filled in the sashes with small, square panes, instituted modern plumbing, drainage, sewage, and electric lights — all of which was emergency work and not too difficult as the city improvements had now been extended as far as the village a mile to the eastward. But it was expensive.
At first Clive had decided to leave the interior to Athalie, but he finally made up his mind to restore the p
lace on its original lines with the exception of her mother’s room. This room he recognised from her frequent description of it; and he locked it, pocketed the key, and turned loose his men.
All that they did was to plaster where it was needed, re-kalsomine all walls and ceilings, scrape, clean, mend, and re-enamel the ancient woodwork. Trim, casings, wainscot, and stairs were restored to their original design and finish; dark hardwood floors replaced the painted boards which had rotted; wherever a scrap of early wall-paper remained he matched it as closely as possible, having an expert from New York to do the business; and the fixtures he chose were simple and graceful and reflected the period as nearly as electric light fixtures can simulate an era of candle-sticks and tallow dips.
He was tremendously tempted to go ahead, so fascinating had the work become to him, but he realised that it was not fair to Athalie. All that he could reasonably do he had done; the place was clean and fresh, and restored to its original condition outside and in, except for the modern necessities of lighting, heating, plumbing, and running water in pantry, laundry, kitchen, and bathrooms. Two of the latter had replaced two clothes-presses; the ancient cellar had been cemented and whitewashed, and heavily stocked with furnace and kitchen coal and kindling.
Also there were fire-dogs for the three fine old-fashioned fireplaces in the house which had been disinterred from under bricked-in and plastered surfaces where only the aged mantel shelves and a hole for a stove pipe revealed their probable presence.
The carpets were too ragged and soiled to retain; the furniture too awful. But he replaced the latter, leaving its disposition and the pleasure of choosing new furniture and new floor coverings to Athalie.
Hers also was to be the pleasure of re-stocking the house with linen; of selecting upholstery and curtains and the requisites for pantry, kitchen, and dining-room.
Once she told him what she had meant to do with the bar. And he took the liberty of doing it, turning the place into a charming sun-parlour, where, in a stone basin, gold-fish swam and a forest of feathery and flowering semi-tropical plants spread a fretwork of blue shadows over the cool stone floor.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 796