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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Three - Chapter 36 |
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_ PART THREE CHAPTER XXXVI It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But not that evening--the blow was too hard and too little expected--nor on the whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the winter. Isabelle interested him,--"her problem," as he called it; that is, given her husband and her circumstances, how she would settle herself into New York,--how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle, much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street, on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had established themselves, on the profits of _The People's_, and only two doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the Rogerses,--he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the Dentons,--all people, according to Cairy, "one might know." When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the polite poor-rich class two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much better worth while. "You make your own life,--it isn't made for you," Cairy said. Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand, it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep. But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the barn--throw out a beautiful room here--terrace it--a formal garden there," etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed. "Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives. "Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only directing it all, you know." And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do just about so much, and find their limit themselves. Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood, electricity,--all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in condition. It is a science, and it takes time,--but it is a duty, as Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little girl, and looked back on her own bringing up--even the St. Mary's part of it--as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted "to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself was now beginning to do. So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, spending her new energy wisely, and though she was getting worn, it was only a month to the date she had set for sailing. Vickers had promised to meet her at Genoa and take her into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could rest. As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband than ever, for he, too, was busy, "with that railroad thing," as she called the great Atlantic and Pacific. She made him buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he could get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had developed laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant for dinner with chance friends that were drifting continually through New York, and afterwards to the theatre,--"to see something lively," as he put it, preferably Weber and Fields', or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not the right thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed when they were "settled." Meantime she went out more or less by herself, as the wives of busy men have to do. "It is so much better not to bring a yawning husband home at midnight," she laughed to Cairy on one of these occasions when she had given him a seat down town in her cab. "By the way, you haven't spoken of Conny lately,--don't you see her any more?" Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, impertinent questions. She carried them off with a lively good nature, but they irritated Cairy occasionally. "I have been busy with my play," he replied shortly. As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those fits of intense occupation which came upon him in the intervals of his devotions. At such times he worked to better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when his thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his muse for his periods of neglect. The experience, he philosophized, which had stored itself, was now finding vent,--the spiritual travail as well as the knowledge of life. A man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told Isabelle,--and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him from the door, he had completed his new play, which had been hanging fire all winter, and he was convinced it was his best. "Yes, a man's work, no matter what it may be, is God's solace for living." In response to which Isabelle mischievously remarked:-- "So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get her to tell me about it." "Do you think she would tell you the truth?" "No." Isabelle, in spite of Cairy's protestations about his work, was gratified with her discovery, as she called it. She had decided that Conny was "a bad influence" on the Southerner; that Cairy was simple and ingenuous,--"really a nice boy," so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done to Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the phrase, "but I don't trust her," or "she is so selfish." She had made these comments to Margaret Pole, and Margaret had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the remark:-- "Conny's no more selfish than most of us women,--only her methods are more direct--and successful." "That is cynical," Isabelle retorted. "Most of us women are not selfish; I am not!" And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very night:-- "John, do you think I am selfish?" John answered this large question with a laugh and a pleasant compliment. "I suppose Margaret means that I don't go in for charities, like that Mrs. Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her old Consumers' League. Well, I had enough of that sort of thing in St. Louis. And I don't believe it does any good; it is better to give money to those who know how to spend it.... Have you any poor relatives we could be good to, John? ... Any cousins that ought to be sent to college, any old aunts pining for a trip to California?" "Lots of 'em, I suppose," her husband responded amiably. "They turn up every now and then, and I do what I can for them. I believe I am sending two young women to college to fit themselves for teaching." Lane was generous, though he had the successful man's suspicion of all those who wanted help. He had no more formulated ideas about doing for others than his wife had. But when anything appealed to him, he gave and had a comfortable sense that he was helping things along. Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret's statement, felt convinced that she was doing her duty in life broadly, "in that station where Providence had called her." 'She was sure that she was a good wife, a good daughter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than these humdrum things,--she meant to be Somebody, she meant to live! ... When she found time to call at the Woodyards', she saw that the house was closed, and the caretaker, who was routed out with difficulty, informed her that the master and mistress had sailed for Europe the week before. 'Very sudden,' mused Isabelle. 'I don't see how Percy could get away.' Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed already, however, and she thought as she drove up town that it was time for her to be going. The city was becoming hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs. Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss Butts and the little girl with her. John promised "to run over and get her" in September, if he could find time. Her little world was all arranged for, she reflected complacently. John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were shaking into place in New York. Cairy sent her some roses when she sailed and was in the mob at the pier to bid her good-by. "Perhaps I shall be over myself later on," he said, "to see if I can place the play." "Oh, do!" Isabelle exclaimed. "And we'll buy things. I am going to ruin John." Lane smiled placidly, as one not easily ruined. When the visitors were driven down the gangway, Isabelle called to Cairy:-- "Come on and go back in the tug with John!" So Cairy limped back. Isabelle was nervous and tired, and now that she was actually on the steamer felt sad at seeing accustomed people and things about to slip away. She wanted to hold on to them as long as possible. Presently the hulking steamer was pulled out into the stream and headed for the sea. It was a hot June morning and through the haze the great buildings towered loftily. The long city raised a jagged sky-line of human immensity, and the harbor swarmed with craft,--car ferries, and sailing vessels dropping down stream carefully to take the sea breeze, steamers lined with black figures, screeching tugs, and occasionally a gleaming yacht. The three stood together on the deck looking at the scene. "It always gives me the same old thrill," Cairy said. "Coming or going, it makes no difference,--it is the biggest fact in the modern world." "I love it!" murmured Isabelle, her eyes fastened on the serried walls about the end of the island. "I shall never forget when I saw it as a child, the first time. It was mystery, like a story-book then, and it has been the same ever since." Lane said nothing, but watched the city with smiling lips. To him the squat car ferries, the lighters, the dirty tramp steamers, the railroad yards across the river, as well as the lofty buildings of the long city--all the teeming life here at the mouth of the country--meant Traffic, the intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring city. He looked at it with a vista that reached from the Iowa town where he had first "railroaded it," up through the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso, to his niche in the largest of these buildings,--all the busy years which he had spent dealing with men. Isabelle touched his arm. "I wish you were coming, too, John," she said as the breeze struck in from the open sea. "Do you remember how we talked of going over when we were in Torso?" What a stretch of time there was between those first years of marriage and to-day! She would never have considered in the Torso days that she could sail off like this alone with a maid and leave her husband behind. "Oh, it will be only a few weeks,--you'll enjoy yourself," he replied. He had been very good about her going over to join Vickers, made no objections to it this time. They were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older and saw more of life. "What is in the paper?" she asked idly, as her husband rolled it up. "There's a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,--nothing else!" "See, that must be the tug!" exclaimed Isabelle, pushing up her veil to kiss her husband. "Good-by--I wish you were going, too--I shall miss you so--be sure you exercise and keep thin!"... She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing tug and take places beside the pilot room,--her tall, square-shouldered husband, and the slighter man, leaning on a cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John waved his paper at her,--the one that had the "roast" about Percy Woodyard. She had meant to read that,--she might see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the tug moved off, both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her husband coming over her afresh. As she gazed back at the retreating tug there was also in her heart a warm feeling for Cairy. "Poor Tom!" she murmured without knowing why. On this great ship, among the thousand or more first-class passengers, there were a goodly number of women like her, leaving home and husband for a foreign trip. After all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for husbands and wives to have vacations from each other. There was no real reason why two people should stick together in an endless daily intimacy because they were married.... Thus the great city--the city of her ambitions--sank mistily on the horizon. _ |
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