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One Woman's Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Four. Realities - Chapter 2. "Bunker's" |
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_ PART FOUR. REALITIES CHAPTER II. "BUNKER'S" Milly could not remember just when she first heard of _Bunker's Magazine_,--certainly not before their return from Europe, but soon thereafter, for its name was associated with her first experiences in New York. Shortly after they landed, _Bunker's_ was added to the highly colored piles on the news-stands among the other periodicals that increased almost daily in number. During that first year of apartment hunting and moving, the name of _Bunker's_ became a household word with them. Some of the men Bragdon knew were interested in the new magazine, and one of the first jobs he did was a cover design for an early number. The magazine with his picture--a Brittany girl knee-deep in the dark water helping to unload a fishing boat--lay on the centre table for weeks. Clive Reinhard's new novel, for which Jack did the pictures, also came out in _Bunker's_ this year. The novelist had been paid ten thousand dollars for the serial rights, Jack told Milly, which seemed to her a large price. Some forms of art, she concluded, were well paid. _Bunker's_ was to be a magazine of a very special kind, of course, altogether different from any other magazine,--literary and popular and artistic all at once. Also it was to have an "uplift"--they were just beginning to use that canting term and _Bunker's_ did much to popularize it. The magazine was to be intensely American in spirit, optimistic and enthusiastic in tone, and very chummy with its readers. Each month it discussed confidentially with "our readers" the glorious success of the previous issue and the astonishing triumphs in the way of amusement and instruction that were to be expected in the future.... All this Milly gathered from the editor's "talks" and also from the men who worked for it or hoped to work for it, who were among their first friends in New York. Its owner, who had boldly given to it his name, was a rich young man, something of an amateur in life, but intensely ambitious of "making himself felt." And this was his way of doing it, instead of buying a newspaper, which would have been more expensive, or of running for public office, which would have meant nothing at all to anybody. Jack pointed him out to his wife one night at the theatre. He was in a box with a party of men and women,--all very well dressed and quite smart-looking. He had a regular, smooth-shaven face with a square jaw like hundreds of other men in New York at that moment. Milly thought Mrs. Bunker overdressed and "ordinary." She was a very blonde, high-colored woman, of the kind a rich man might marry for her physical charm. All that first year _Bunker's_ came more and more to the fore in their life. The wife of the Responsible Editor, Mrs. Montgomery Billman, called on Milly in company with Mrs. Fredericks, the wife of the Fiction Editor, and the two ladies, while critically examining Milly, talked of "our magazine" and described the Howard Bunkers, who evidently played a large role in their lives. Mrs. Billman, Milly decided, and so confided to her husband, was hard and ambitious socially. Mrs. Fredericks she "could not quite make out," and liked her better. Both the ladies seemed to "go in for things" hard and meant to "count." They knew much more about their husbands' affairs than Milly had ever cared to know about Jack's. She decided that was the modern way, and that Jack ought to take her more fully into his confidence. By the time she had returned these visits and realized the importance felt by the editors' wives for their husbands' work _Bunker's_ gained greatly in her eyes. Then, unexpectedly, the magazine became of first importance to the Bragdons. Jack was asked to become the Art Editor. He had been at luncheon with Bunker himself and the Responsible Editor, who was a gaunt and rather slouchy person from the other shore of the Mississippi. The Responsible Editor, who had a way of looking through his spectacles as if he were carrying heavy public burdens, unfolded to Bragdon the aims and purposes of the magazine, while Bunker contented himself with ordering the lunch and, at the close, making him the offer. Milly, when she learned of the offer, was surprised that her husband did not show more elation. She had a woman's respect for any institution, and Mrs. Billman had made her feel that _Bunker's_ was a very important institution. "What will they give?" she asked. "Six thousand." It was more than she had ever dreamed an "artist" could make as an assured income. "Aren't you glad--all that!" she exclaimed. "That's not much. Billman gets twelve thousand and Fredericks eight. But I shall be able to make something 'on the side.'" "I think it's wonderful!" Milly said. But Jack exhibited slight enthusiasm. "I'll have to see to getting illustrations for their idiotic stories and half tones and colors--all that rubbish, you know." There was nothing inspiring to him in "educating the people in the best art," as the Responsible Editor had talked about the job. "And they want me to contribute a series of articles on the new art centres in the United States: Denver in Art, Pittsburgh in Art, Milwaukee in Art--that sort of rot," he scoffed. Milly saw nothing contemptible in this; all the magazines did the same thing in one subject or another to arouse local enthusiasm for themselves. "You write so easily," she suggested, by way of encouragement, remembering the newspaper paragraphs he used to contribute to the _Star_. "But I want to paint!" Bragdon growled, and dropped the subject. In the intervals of pot boiling he had been working on several canvases that he hoped to exhibit in the spring. Milly had lost confidence in painting since she had come to New York and had heard about the lives of young painters. Even if Jack could finish his pictures in time for the exhibition, they might not be accepted, and if they were, would probably be hung in some obscure corner of the crowded galleries for several weeks, with a lot of other "good-enough" canvases, only to be returned to the artist--a dead loss, the fate of most pictures, she had learned. So Milly was for the Art Editorship. She took counsel with Big Brother, who happened to call, and B. B., who regarded Milly as a sensible woman, the right sort for an impracticable artist to have married, said: "Jack would be crazy to let such a chance slip by him. I know Bunker--he's all right." So when he saw Jack next, he went at him boisterously on the subject, but the artist cut him short by remarking quietly,--"I've told them I'd take it--the thing's settled." When Milly heard this, she felt a little reaction. Would Marion Reddon have done the same with Sam? But she put her doubts aside easily. "It'll be a good start. Jack is still young, and he will have plenty of time to paint--if he has it in him" (a reservation she would not have made two years before), "and it will do him good to know more people." Milly would like herself to know more people in this great city, which was just beginning to interest her, and she was not at all inclined to immure herself in a suburb or the depths of the country with a husband who, after all, had not fully satisfied her heart. To know people, to have a wide circle of acquaintance, seemed to her, as it did to most people, of the highest importance, not merely for pleasure but for business as well. How otherwise was one to get on in this life, except through knowing people? Even an artist must make himself seen.... So she considered that in urging her husband to become part of the Bunker machine, she was acting wisely for both,--nay, for all three of the family, for should not Virginia's future already be taken into account? The wife of the Fiction Editor, with whom she had become intimate in her rapid way, confirmed this view of things. Hazel Fredericks fascinated Milly much more than the aggressive Mrs. Billman, perhaps because she went out of her way to be nice to the artist's wife. Milly had not yet convinced the wife of the Responsible Editor that she was important, and she never wasted time over "negative" people. The dark little Hazel Fredericks, with her muddy eyes and rather thick lips, was a more subtle woman than Mrs. Billman and took the pains to cultivate "possibilities." She had Milly at lunch one day and listened attentively to all her dubitations about her husband's career. Then she pronounced:-- "Stanny was like that. He wanted to write stories. They are pretty good stories, too, but you know there's not much sale for the merely good thing. And unsuccessful art of any kind is hardly worth while, is it?... When we were first married, he had an idea of going away somewhere and living on nothing at all until he had made a name. But that is not the way things are done, is it?" She paused to laugh sympathetically and look at Milly, as if she must understand what foolish creatures men often were and how wives like Milly and herself had to save them from their follies. "Of course," she continued, "if he had had Reinhard's luck, it would have been another thing. Clive Reinhard's stuff is just rot, of course, but people like it and he gets all kinds of prices." She took a cigarette and throwing herself comfortably on a divan blew a silvery wreath upwards. Meditatively she summed up the philosophy she held,-- "It's better to stay with the game and make the most you can out of it, don't you think so?" Milly agreed. "And _Bunker's_ is a very good game, if you haven't any money." Milly admired her new friend's cleverness. She was the kind who knew how to manage life,--her own life especially,--and get what she wanted out of the game. Milly began to have great respect for that sort of women and wished she were more like them. She felt that Hazel Fredericks never did things waywardly: she always had a well-calculated purpose hidden in her mind, just as she had a carefully conceived picture of herself that she desired to leave upon the minds of others. If Mrs. Billman had put her husband where he was in _Bunker's_ by force, as her rival hinted, Mrs. Fredericks had also engineered "Stanny's" career with skilful strategy. * * * * * Just at present she was involved in a project for a cooeperative apartment building, which some people she knew were to put up in a desirable neighborhood. She quite fired Milly with the desire to buy space in the building. "It's really the only way you can live in New York, if you haven't money," Mrs. Fredericks said convincingly, displaying the plan of their tiny apartment. "Of course we can't have children--there's no room for them--but Stanny is so delicate I shouldn't feel it was right to have them, anyway." She spoke as if it were a sacrifice she had deliberately made for her husband.... Milly talked enthusiastically to Jack that night of the new cooeperative building and urged him to look into it. "I do so want a home of my own," she said with a touch of pathos. "Mrs. Fredericks still thinks there's space to be had on one of the floors." Bragdon looked into it, and reported that a good deal of space was to be had. He was dubious of the wisdom of the scheme, even if by a complicated arrangement of loans they could manage to buy a nominal share. But Milly was persistent and proved to him with a sudden command of figures that it would really reduce the cost of rent. She found out more details, and she gained the support of Big Brother, who generously offered to finance the undertaking for them. "It will make you feel settled," he said, "to own your own home." Jack could not see that in the end he should own much of anything unless by some surprising stroke of luck a good many thousands of dollars fell into his lap. But he felt that Milly should have a permanent place of her own, such as the slice of the new ten-story building offered, and it would be better for the child than to be wandering from rented apartment to apartment. So the plans were drawn, the agreements practically made, when he had a final misgiving. The agreements lay on the table before him to be signed, and he had just read them over carefully. They seemed to him like a chain that, once signed, bound him to the city, to _Bunker's_ for an indefinite future. His editorial chair had been specially galling that day, perhaps, or the impulse to paint stronger than usual. He threw down the papers and exclaimed,-- "Let's quit, Milly, before it's too late!" "What do you mean?" And he made his plea, for the last time seriously, to take their lives in their hands and like brave people walk out of the city-maze to freedom, to a simple, rational life without pretence. "I want to cut out all this!" he cried with passion, waving his hand carelessly over the huddle of city roofs, "get into some quiet spot and paint, paint, paint! until I make 'em see that I have something to say. It's the only way to do things!" With passionate vividness he saw the years of his youth and desire slipping away in the round of trivial "jobs" in the city; he saw the slow decay of resolves under the ever increasing demands to "make good" by earning money. And he shrank from it as from the pit. "I don't see why you say that," Milly replied. "Most painters live in the city part of the year. There's ---- and ----" She argued the matter with him long into the night, obstinately refusing to see the fatality of the choice they were making. "We can get rid of the apartment any time, if we don't want it," she said, and quoted Hazel Fredericks. They came nearer to seeing into each other's souls that night than ever before or ever again. They saw that their inmost interests were antagonistic and must always remain so for all the active, creative years of their lives, and the best they could do, for the sake of their dead ideals, much more for the sake of the living child, was decently to compromise between their respective egotisms and thus "live and let live." "If I had married a plain business man," Milly let fall in the heat of the argument, revealing in that phrase the knowledge she had arrived at of her mistake, "it would have been different." Bragdon was not sure of that, but he was sure that in so far as he could he must supply for her the things that "plain business man" could have given her. Or they must part--they even looked into that gulf, from which both shrank back. At the end Milly said:-- "If you don't think it's best, don't do it. You must do what you think is best for your career." Such was her present ideal of wifely submission to husband in all matters that concerned his "career," but she let him plainly perceive that in saying this she was merely putting the responsibility of their lives wholly upon his shoulders, as he was the breadwinner. With an impatient gesture, Bragdon drew the agreements towards him and signed them. "There!" he said, with a somewhat bitter laugh, "nothing in life is worth so much talk." Afterwards Milly reminded him that he had made this choice himself of his own free will: he could not reproach her for their having bought a slice in the East River Terrace Building. _ |
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