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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Three - Chapter 32 |
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_ PART THREE CHAPTER XXXII No, women such as Margaret Pole do not "despise their husbands because they are unfortunate in money matters,"--not altogether because they prove themselves generally incompetent in the man's struggle for life! This process of the petrification of a woman's heart, slow or rapid as it may be, is always interesting,--if the woman is endowed in the first place with the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton may have come to marry Lawrence Pole, we can defer for the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, unprofitable, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How does any woman come to marry any man? Poets, psychologists, and philosophers have failed to account for the accidents of this emotional nexus. What is determinable and more to our purpose is the subsequent process of dissolution, or petrifaction. All that need be said is that Margaret married her husband when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in him, and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible to many who marry. However foolishly she may have deluded herself,--betrayed a fatal incapacity to divine,--she believed when she went to the altar with Lawrence Pole that she was marrying a Man,--one whom she could respect as well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in mind and heart and soul. She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a manner that had seemed to comrades at St. Mary's cold because of its reticence, there burned the fire of a crusading race,--of those Southerners who had pushed from the fat lowlands about the sea into the mountains and across them to the wilderness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had ridden his cavalry horse across the entire country in search of a new opening, to build at forty-three a new life for himself and his wife--after defeat! There was courage, aspiration, the power of deeds in that blood,--note the high forehead, the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there was also in her religious faith, received from her father the Bishop, piety, and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love to one's family and friends, and charity to the world. All this was untested, handed down to her wrapped in the prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of what we call the world, there in Washington among her mother's friends,--had been gay, perhaps reckless, played like a girl with love and life, those hours of sunshine. She knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were carnal; but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as well as body, without a spot from living, without a vicious nerve in her body, ready to learn. And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn that heart to stone,--not that alone. The small segment of the world that knew the Poles might think so, hearing how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously left there his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, had lost what he could of his wife's property. To be sure, after that first "ill luck," Margaret's eyes had opened to the fact that her husband was not "practical," was easily led by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the Man's part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret had never expected to be rich,--had no ambition for place in the social race,--she would have gone back to her blue-capped mountains and lived there contented, "with something to look at." She had urged this course upon her husband after the first disaster; but he was too vain to "get out," to "quit the game," to leave New York. So with the understanding that henceforth he would stick to prosaic methods of money making, he had started again in his brokerage business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied with her babies. As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed itself, she had thought that child-bearing, child-having would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. Margaret Pole was one who "didn't mind having babies," and did not consider the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. She liked it all, she told Isabelle, and was completely happy only when the children were coming and while they were helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all. Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came in, shaking in hand and heart, and the miserable news was soon out,--"caught in the panic," "unexpected turn of the market." But how could he be caught, his wife demanded, with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And after a little,--lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge being unwrapped,--it appeared,--the fact. He had "gone into cotton"--with whose money? His mother's estate,--those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty judge had put aside for his widow! With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might have seen that the process of petrifaction had set in, had gone far, indeed. Margaret loved her mother-in-law,--the sweet old woman of gentle fancies who lived in an old house in an old town on the Massachusetts coast, the town where she and the judge had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who had somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she knew what was missing in her woman's heart. No, the judge's widow should not pay for her son's folly! So Margaret sold the New York house, which was hers, and also some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, realizing bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing her boys' heritage--the gift of her forefathers--for a miserable tithe of its real value,--just because their father was too weak to hold what others had given him; and hadn't kept faith with her like a frank comrade.... What was left she took into her own possession. So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and distress, in sickness and divorce, what else does an American do? Margaret had one lingering hope for her husband. He had a good voice. At college it was considered remarkable,--a clear, high tenor. He had done little with his gift except make social capital out of it. And he had some aptitude for acting. He had been a four years' star in the college operas. If the judge had not belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted finance--and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to herself, over there, away from trivial society,--the bungled business career ended,--Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only thirty-two,--not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he should do. And then she beguiled herself with the hope that some of that intellectual life, the interests in books, music, art--in ideas--could come to them in common,--a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life might be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband's nature, with few illusions, but with tolerance and hope, Margaret betook herself to Munich and settled her family in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to their income,--_her_ income, which was all they had. But it mattered not what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to make a little answer.... At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his vanity, and offered an easy solution for his catastrophe in cotton. He was the artist, not fitted for business, as his wife saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and take lessons,--but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. Then Larry was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he found some idle American students, and ran about with them, and through them he fell in with a woman of the Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every agreeable European centre. When Margaret emerged from her retirement and began to look about, she found this Englishwoman very prominent on the horizon. Larry sang with her and drove with her and did the other things that he could not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the nine months of his wife's disability socially irksome, and amuses himself more or less innocently. Margaret understood. Whether Larry's fondness for Mrs. Demarest was innocent or not, she did not care; she was surprised with herself to find that she had no jealousy whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. This Mrs. Conry had a husband who came to Munich after her and bore her back to London. When Larry proposed that they should spend the next season in London, his wife said calmly:-- "You may if you like. I am going to return to America." "And my work?" Margaret waved a hand ironically:-- "You will be better alone.... My father is getting old and feeble; I must see him."... When the family sailed, Larry was in the party. Mrs. Demarest had written him the proper thing to write after such an intimacy, and Larry felt that he must "get a job."... In those months of the coming of the little girl and the summer afterwards, the new Margaret had been born. It was a quiet woman, outwardly calm, inwardly thinking its way slowly to conclusions,--thoughts that would have surprised the good Bishop. For when her heart had begun to grow cold in the process of petrifaction, there had awakened a new faculty,--her mind. She began to digest the world. Those little rules of life, the ones handed down with the prayer-book, having failed, she asked questions,--'What is life? What is a woman's life? What is my life? What is duty? A woman's duty? My duty, married to Larry?'... And one by one with relentless clarity she stripped bare all those platitudinous precepts that she had inherited, had accepted, as one accepts the physical facts of the world. When the untrained mind of a woman, driven in on itself by some spiritual bruise, begins to reach out for light, the end may be social Anarchy. Margaret read and understood French and German, and she had ample time to read. She saw modern plays that presented facts, naked and raw, and women's lives from the inside, without regard to the moral convention. She perceived that she had a soul, an inner life of her own, apart from her husband, her children, her father, from all the world. That soul had its own rights,--must be respected. What it might compel her to do in the years to come, was not yet clear. She waited,--growing. If it had not been for her father, she would have been content to stay on in Europe as she was, reading, thinking, loving her children. On the way back to America, Larry, becoming conscious in the monotony of the voyage of his own insufficiency and failure, hinted that he was ready to accept the mountain home, which Margaret still retained, her mother's old house. "We might try living in the country," he suggested. But Margaret, focussing in one rapid image the picture of her husband always before her in the intimacy of a lonely country life, Larry disintegrating in small ways, shook her head firmly, giving as an excuse, "The children must have schools." She would set him at some petty job in the city, anything to keep him from rotting completely. For he was the father of her children! The good old Bishop met them at the pier in New York. In spite of his hardened convictions about life, the little rule of thumb by which he lived, he knew something of men and women; and he suspected that process of petrifaction in his daughter's heart. So he took occasion to say in their first intimate talk:-- "I am glad that you and Lawrence have decided to come home to live. It is not well for people to remain long away from their own country, to evade the responsibilities of our social brotherhood. The Church preaches the highest communism, ... and you must help your husband to find some definite service in life, and do it." Margaret's lips curved dangerously, and the Bishop, as if answering this sign, continued:-- "Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. But he is a good man,--a faithful husband and a kind father. That is much, Margaret. It rests with you to make him more!" 'Does it?' Margaret was asking herself behind her blank countenance. 'One cannot make bricks without straw.... What is that sort of goodness worth in a man? I had rather my husband were what you call a bad man--and a Man.' But she said nothing. "Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life," continued the Bishop, feeling that he was making headway; "that one who is weak is bound to one who is stronger,--perchance for the good of both." Margaret smiled. "And a good woman has always the comfort of her children,--when she has been blessed with them,--who will grow to fill the desolate places in her heart," concluded the good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably presented to his daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, with the new faculty that was awakening in her:-- 'Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman's heart completely? I love mine, even if they are spotted with his weaknesses. I am a good mother,--I know that I am,--yet I could love,--oh, I could love grandly some one else, and love them more because of it! At thirty a woman is not done with loving, even though she has three children.' But she did not dispute her father's words, merely saying in a weary voice, "I suppose Larry and I will make a life of it, as most people do, somehow!" Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there was welling up within her the spirit of rebellion against her lot,--the ordinary lot of acceptance. She had a consciousness of power in herself to live, to be something other than the prosaic animal that endures. * * * * * The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began the routine of American suburban life, forty miles from New York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a tone of cold irony:-- "You can resign when you find something better suited to your talents." Thus at thirty-five Larry was _range_ and a commuter. He dressed well, kept up one of his clubs, talked the condition of the country, and was a kind father to his boys.... 'What more should a woman expect?' Margaret asked herself, thinking of her father's words and enumerating her blessings. Three healthy children, a home and enough to eat and wear, a husband who (in spite of Conny's gossip) neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor beat her,--who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! Margaret sighed with a bitter sense of irony. "I must be a wicked woman," her mother would have said under similar circumstances,--and there lies the change in woman's attitude. Looking across the table at Larry in his neat evening clothes,--he was growing a trifle stout these days,--listening to his observations on the railroad service, or his suggestion that she should pay more attention to dress, Margaret felt that some day she must shriek maniacally. But instead her heart grew still and cold, and her blue eyes icy. "What is there in woman that makes trifles so important?" she asked Isabelle in a rare effusion of truth-speaking. "Why do some voices--correct and well-bred ones--exasperate you, and others, no better, fill you with content, comfort? Why do little acts--the way a man holds a book or strokes his mustache--annoy you? Why are you dead and bored when you walk with one person, and are gay when you walk by yourself?" To all of which Isabelle sagely replied: "You think too much, Margaret dear. As John says when I ask him profound questions, 'Get up against something real!'" For Isabelle could be admirably wise where another was concerned. "Yes," Margaret admitted, "I suppose I am at fault. It is my job to make life worth living for all of us,--the Bishop, mother-in-law, children, Larry,--all but myself. That's a woman's privilege." So she did her "job." But within her the lassitude of dead things was ever growing, sapping her physical buoyancy, sapping her will. She called to her soul, and the weary spirit seemed to have withdrawn. "A case of low vitality," in the medical jargon of the day. And hers was a vital stock, too. 'In time,' she said, 'I shall be dead, and then I shall be a good woman,--wholly good! The Bishop will be content.' And she smiled in denial of her own words. For even then, at the lowest ebb, her soul spoke: there was wonder and joy and beauty somewhere in this gray procession of phenomena, and it must come to her sometime. And when it came, her heart said, she would grasp it! _ |
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