“Ah, yes,” he scornfully agreed. “You cold-blooded people! But at this moment they are alone together — he is making his appeal — his demand as a man — she cannot resist him. She must give herself to him!”
“She would do nothing of the kind. Now see here — let me show you.” Stella rose and beckoned him to her desk. “You be working here, and I’ll be Elaine. Mrs. MacAvelly shall be the audience, and I’ll show you a love scene a la Americaine.”
Mrs. MacAvelly took a chair near the door, and Stella, retreating to the dining room, entered as Elaine, with—”’Is not my husband here?”’
There is something of the actor in most of us, children show that; and this position was not a difficult one. The dramatist threw himself into the spirit of Panin, and it was with a look she had never seen before in his intolerant eyes as he answered: “He was here — he will be here again at eleven.” Stella remembered the earlier lines readily enough, but when he came forward to seize her hands, she drew back.
“Now here is where you are wrong, Mr. Smith. There will be no seizing. She will argue this out with him. Let me look at the manuscript. Now here she withdraws firmly — you go on from— ‘I am sure.’” And she laid it down on the table.
‘“I am sure,”’ said Mr. Smith, and he looked it. ‘“You are strong and proud — but love is stronger than your strength, stronger even than your pride.’” He came nearer, but she stepped away from him, answering with sorrow and amazement in her voice:
‘“But my husband trusts me. He has never dreamed that I could care for anyone else.’” She neither heard nor saw the entrance of Mr. Widfield, who came in quietly through the dining room, thinking she might be asleep, and now stood in the parting of the curtain.
“‘Let him dream on,”’ said Smith with passionate intensity. “‘You are awake at last. You know that you love me.’”
“‘I will admit it,”’ said Stella in a steady voice. “‘I do love you’ — but wait!”
He took a step toward her — she turned — and saw her husband.
Her face changed instantly. “Why, Morgan — come in! I was just showing Mrs. MacAvelly how—” But there was no Mrs. MacAvelly in the chair by the door. “Oh — she must have gone out.”
“Obviously,” said Mr. Widfield. “Pray, do not let me interrupt you, Mr. Smith.”
But Mr. Smith was intensely annoyed. He had been getting precisely what he had come for, the very tone and accent of the life he did not know of, the kind of woman he had chosen to put into his play without any sufficient acquaintance. And here was his heroine dropping all interest in his work the moment her husband appeared.
“I am used to being interrupted,” he replied with grim pretense of patience. “Good evening, Mrs. Widfield. Good evening, sir.”
He went out, Stella polite, Morgan quite motionless. She came back from the door, still a little confused, and annoyed as well as amused at Mr. Smith.
“I am glad he had the sense to go, for once,” she said.
Morgan walked to one of the windows and stood looking out, his shoulders square and black against the panes. She watched him, puzzled at first; then in sudden horror her quick brain showed her the thing he might be thinking, the disgraceful absurdity of his thinking it. She drew herself up. “I hope you have had a pleasant evening with Cousin Alicia,” she remarked quietly. To which he coldly returned: “I hope you have had a pleasant evening with Mr. Smith.”
Then the bell rang softly, and Mr. Widfield, going to the door, let in the two maids.
CHAPTER 11
With neither reproach nor explanation, in perfect quiet and with mutual courtesy, Mr and Mrs. Widfield bade each other good night and retired to their rooms.
Stella was too angry to think out the situation fairly; Morgan was too angry to try. She was upheld by a burning sense of injustice, not only of injustice, but of insult. That he should dare!
She could not but admit that the situation he had chanced upon was almost farcically compromising, but that very thing should have shown him at once the impossibility of thinking — her cheeks burned in the darkness.
That her husband, who had known her for so many years, her husband — who knew she loved him so intensely that it had even become a weariness to him — that he for one swiftest second should imagine her as personally interested in any other man, least of all such a man as that! If he had been jealous of Mr. Tillotson now, she would not have been so surprised, nor so offended; for jealous, as one friend of another, he had some right to be. She certainly was fond of Mr. Tillotson — but not in that way — not for a moment.
There may have been, in this stage of her thinking, a certain vague consciousness of a trifle different feeling, at least on Mr. Tillotson’s part, that evening — a feeling which might almost be said to verge on “that way,” but she put the idea from her, and even farther the idea that she had been at all moved thereby from her dispassionate friendliness. Anyway it had nothing to do with her present cause of indignation. In the case in hand she had but a bare tolerance for the man, an intellectual interest only, tempered by much criticism and some absolute dislike. As to that “situation” she flushed again, from anger solely.
“The idea!” she flung out softly into the darkness. “Does he imagine that if I did love any other man I would talk like that! Doesn’t he know!” But the words said themselves over to her relentlessly, with Smith’s flashing eyes, his rich compelling voice at once softer and stronger than she had ever heard it.
‘“You are strong and proud’” — how much had Morgan heard? ‘“But love is stronger than your strength, stronger even than your pride’” — had he heard that?
Then her own voice — she had tried to speak as a woman would in such case — a woman almost surrendering: “‘But my husband trusts me. He has never dreamed that I could care for another man.’” Oh, but Morgan must have seen how it was! And then that low, barbaric, exultant: “‘Let him dream on. You are awake now. You know that you love me!”’ And her admission — her definite admission!
Still, Mrs. MacAvelly was there — she had said that. Of course he believed her. She had never lied to him in her life. And yet Mrs. MacAvelly was not there when he came in....
Stella got little sleep that night, and Morgan less.
If she was stiffened with cold anger at his suspicion and hot with shame for him — that he should have sunk to it, he was torn with the same feelings in more furious form. His was not a delicately analytical mind. He read little fiction and made no dissection of what he read, nor did he minutely discuss the actions of his friends, much less his own. Of course if he had had to testify on oath: “Do you suspect your wife of this thing?” he would have denied it, denied it honestly. He did not believe it of her. He did not really believe that she even cared for the man. Indeed he went so far as to tell himself: “It’s that cursed play of his!”
But this he did not work out clearly; it was only a theory advanced to meet the facts, and the facts were overwhelming. He had been so sorry for his overworked wife, so remorseful for ill temper, for leaving her at dinner, for going off with Alicia in that way. Alicia had not been half so stimulating a companion as Stella would have been at the play — she certainly was tiresome at times. And he had let himself in so softly, meaning to tiptoe to his wife’s room and see if she was asleep. He had seen the table laid for two, the signs of a little supper, and then that light between the portieres, and the voices — such voices!
He told himself that he was a fool, that he was making a mountain out of a molehill, that he knew Stella through and through — the thing was unthinkable. Against that rose a sort of devil’s advocate within him, presenting the case in circumstantial evidence: “She knew it was my birthday and that I was going to take her to that play. She fairly threw me at Alicia — I didn’t want to go with her. She didn’t care if I stayed out to dinner. She certainly stated that she had work to do. Then this fellow comes — probably telephoned beforehand — and they have supper
. She must have got it for him herself — the maids were out! It was not their night out. She must have sent them away!”
And Morgan rose and walked the floor in long swift strides, making no noise however.
The days that followed were coldly quiet. There was no break between them.
Morgan waited for Stella to explain to him what he felt sure, in spite of all that damaging evidence, was explicable.
Stella waited for Morgan to apologize to her for a suspicion she scorned to discuss.
In pride and courtesy and calmness they remained apparently as before, conversing perhaps a little less, yet without acrimony.
Mrs. O’Mally and Hedda felt the difference, though they could scarce have defined it.
“There’s some trouble between them,” said good Mrs. O’Mally. “I would not speak of it to any outsider, but you must have seen it.”
“They don’t quarrel,” Hedda replied.
“Oh, quarrel, is it? There’s many a man and his wife quarrels from mornin’ till night an’ are as lovin’ as turtle doves all the time. ’Tis not quarrelin’— ’tis the black frost has settled on them. I wish the boys was at home.”
But it was some time yet to the next holidays.
Only when Mr. Tillotson came did they both unbend and seem more like themselves, Morgan because he liked the man and was glad of a friend, Stella because somehow she did not feel willing for that friend to know how gray and desolate her life had turned. Finding himself so cordially welcomed he came frequently, and was not sorry to learn that among their common interests her work came more into prominence.
Under the whipping stimulus of Mr. Smith’s arrogant and merciless attacks and ignorings, he knew she had gained much in mental vigor. In the gentler atmosphere of his own penetrating criticism and sincere approval she had quite bloomed, but now he felt a new stage had been reached. There was a detachedness, a full concentration, which he knew to be essential to the best work, and had not found in her before. She began to read more intensively as well as extensively, so much indeed that he wondered when she slept, and told her she was studying too hard — that she would break down.
At which Stella smiled, a hopeless drawn little smile that told him there was something deeply wrong. He had little idea of the stark devotion with which she had plunged into her new labors, nor of the immense consolation she found in it. Without that resource she would indeed have broken, for the wall of ice between her and her deepest love remained unmelted.
The luckless playwright she could not bear to see again, blaming him the more bitterly that she could not justify the feeling. Someone had to be blamed, and she could not, in spite of effort, keep up her anger against her husband. As she remembered all the circumstances, those cumulative damaging circumstances, she saw that any man must have been shocked into suspicion, however unjustifiable. But if anger failed her, pride did not. He gave her no opening, made no advance, nor did she ask it.
Her children were out of reach; hearty, sturdy boys they were, full of their own interests, making few calls on her. Her home ran smoothly as before. And when she faced each gray morning — the brightest sun did not lighten them now. The thought of work to do, real work, was her only comfort.
A proposition came to her to furnish short articles for a daily paper, only a thousand words or so, but mounting up steadily into three hundred and sixty-five thousand in the year, equal to a considerable book. She accepted it eagerly. In fear of falling short she wrote feverishly, doing two or three a day to have enough in store. To keep up a variety she read widely both in current events and among such sources as would give a background of fuller knowledge to her comments. When she had a sufficient accumulation of these trifles she would take enough time for some longer work, throwing herself into it without reserve.
To her growing wonder and new joy she found in all this not merely what she sought, the oblivion to pain, but a fresh delight, something life had never offered her before. It was not pride; that had been pleasant enough in her first sudden wave of popularity. It was a growing satisfaction in the work itself, in doing it, and in the mighty brotherhood of workers among whom she found herself. There was something in life then, after all, besides love....
If Morgan could forget his trouble in a violent immersion in business, so could she forget hers in business of her own. She felt a new pity for certain friends of hers: little Mrs. Warren, whose husband drank, and who sat at home, mourning, or mourned abroad, growing paler and grayer and less effectual daily; and Cynthia Deveraux — those who knew her husband did not blame her for her counterflirtations, but what good did it do to him, or her? All poor Cynthia’s dainty dressing, creaming and massaging could not hide the reckless grief that drove her on. Even Mary Franklin, whose children were rather overworked, as an occupation, seemed to fall far short of the content she strove for.
Stella did not pretend she was fully contented. She suffered deeply, constantly. There was that inner ache, that trouble never quite forgotten. But while that part of life lay behind locked doors, other doors opened, and she grew strong in contact with the broader issues of world-life outside.
If she had known how this quiet, uncomplaining attitude affected Morgan, her joy would have been keen indeed, but he said nothing. As day by day he saw the woman by his side walk steadily on, achieving, learning, growing, treating him with steady courtesy and kindness, making no explanation and demanding none, he felt a new sentiment toward her, a feeling he had never known before, that he had not supposed he could have for a woman — he respected her as he would a man.
He respected her for her work.
This did not make her seem like a man — which rather surprised him. She was never more womanly. Her quiet grace, her beauty, and the inner call of her love-hungry heart — all these drew him to her far more strongly than when she had constantly shown him these and nothing else. In spite of all dogged reiteration of the justifying causes for his anger he gradually lost faith in it. But he was proud as well as she, and not only proud, but stubborn. Surely the least she could do was to explain.
Hampden Tillotson came and went; talked deeply with Morgan, grew to know him well, and liked him in spite of a growing resentment, a feeling that in some way he must be responsible for the trouble in Stella’s eyes.
She took great comfort in his companionship. The accords and discords which draw men and women together or keep them apart play on in a dim region where neither reason nor principle hold sway.
This man was within range on that wireless system which makes some unions possible and others impossible. If she had met him in her youth instead of Morgan she might easily have loved him. If she had not loved Morgan, fully and satisfyingly, with the deep foundation of physiological accord and the rich superstructure of their happy years together, their interwoven memories and interests, their well-loved children, she might even have loved him now. As it was, in the cold and darkness that lay between her and her husband, following that long period of nervous strain which had gone before it, and with a growing jealousy of Alicia which she strove against continually, but which would not down, she found almost her only rest in the atmosphere of quiet unspoken affection with which her friend surrounded her.
Unselfish woman though she was, she never gave a thought to what it might cost him. It had not once occurred to her that, as Mr. Smith had said, even an American wife was a woman and a man might love her.
He watched and studied her, feeling vaguely that something was wrong, yet unable to place it, now hotly wishing that he might be the cause of that trouble, and then cursing himself for a brute that he even wished it.
And all the time she hoped and hoped that he, unprompted, would tell Morgan of that too short evening together, and how far from pleased they had been to have Mr. Smith descend upon them.
But he never referred to that evening.
If she had continued alert and happy he might perhaps have been able to fight down this growing longing for her presence, her voice, her s
erene yet vivid spirit; he might have had the strength to go away, as he sometimes felt he must. But she seemed far from happy in spite of her new strength; not only that, but she seemed to brighten when he came, to need him somehow — and he stayed.
Morgan was glad of his visits, glad now, of anyone’s visits; he went out frequently, and when Stella alleged work and would not go out with him he took to “dropping in” on Mrs. MacAvelly a little, and on Alicia a good deal. Also his business journeys seemed more frequent.
Stella was much alone. One night, one of the many nights when Morgan was not there and Mr. Tillotson was, that gentleman left his gloves on departure, came back and found the door still open — Hedda was mailing a letter. He went in, glad of the chance of another look at the gracious, earnest woman he had left so reluctantly, left because their talk had verged on the theme of a recent novel and the principles involved in it, and he had felt that he must go — or say far more than he had meant to. She had stood so tall and graceful there, saying good night in such a friendly voice — he could hardly find strength to leave.
And now, as he entered, all that serene quiet was gone; she had sunk on a chair, laid her white arms along the back and bent her head on them; she was shaking in a passion of tears.
He closed the door; he was beside her, stooping, kneeling:
“Stella — what is it? Tell me — I won’t have you suffer! If you must cry,” he added with an effort at his usual manner, “let me help!” And he gathered her into his arms like a child.
For the moment she yielded to the comforting arms, to the tender voice, the cheek against her hair; it seemed so near to what her heart was aching for. But only for a moment. With swift revulsion of feeling she tore herself away — this was not Morgan.
“Forgive me,” she said tremulously, “and thank you. You are heavenly kind — but you mustn’t.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 81
