Told in a French Garden — 08- Chapter Six, Part 2

Shattuck took a turn up and down the long room, not quite at ease with himself.

Mrs. Shattuck seemed to be thinking.

As he passed her, he stopped, picked up her cushions, and re-arranged them about her, with an idle caress by the way, a kiss gently dropped on the inside of her white wrist.

She followed his every movement with a strange speculative look in her eyes, almost as if he were some new and strange animal that she was studying for the first time.

When she spoke again, it was to go on as if she had not been interrupted, "It seems to me that man comes out of a great passion just as good as new, while a woman is shattered--in a moral sense--and never fully recovers herself."

Shattuck's back was toward her when he replied.

"Sorry to spoil any more illusions, dear child, but how about the long list of men who are annually ruined by it?

The men in the prisons, the men who kill themselves, the men who hang for it?"

"Those are crimes.

I am not talking of the criminal classes, but of the world in which normal people live."

"Our set," he laughed, "but that is not the whole world, alas!"

"I know that men--well bred, cultivated, refined, even honorable men,--seem to be able to repeat every emotion of life.

A woman scales the heights but once.

Hence it must depend, in the case of women capable of deep love--on the men whether the relation into which marriage betrays them be decent or indecent.

What I should like to be able to discover is--what provision does either man or civilization propose to make for the woman whom Fate, in wanton irony, reduces, even in marriage, to the self-considered level of the girl in the street?"

There was amazement--even a foreboding--on Shattuck's face as he paused in his walk, and, for the first time speaking anxiously ejaculated, "I swear I don't follow you!"

She went on as if she had not been interrupted, as if she had something to say which had to be said, as if she were reasoning it out for herself: "Take my case.

I don't claim that it is uncommon.

I do claim that I was not the woman for the situation.

I was an only child.

My father's marriage had not been happy.

I was brought up by a disappointed man on philosophy and pessimism."

"Old sceptics, and modern scoffers.

I remember it well."

"Before I was out of my teens, I had imbibed a mistrust for all emotions.

Perhaps you did not know that?

You may have thought, because they were not all on the outside, that I had none.

My poor father had hoped, with his teachings, to save me from future misery.

He had probably thought to spare me the commonplace sorrows of love.

But he could not."

"There is one thing, my child, that the passing generation cannot do for its heirs--live for them--luckily.

Why, you might as well forbid a rose to blossom by word of mouth, as try to thwart nature in a beautiful healthy woman."

"It seems to me that to bring up a woman as I was brought up only prepares her to take the distemper the quicker."

"I do not remember that of you.

But I do know that no woman was ever wooed as hotly as you were--or ever--I swear it--more ardently desired.

No woman ever led a man the chase you led me.

If ever in those days you were as anxious for my love as you have said you were this evening, no one would have guessed it, least of all I." "My reason had already taught me that mine was but the common fate of all women: that life was demanding of me the usual tribute to posterity: that the sweetness of the emotion was Nature's trick to make it endurable.

But according to Nature's eternal plan, my heart could not listen to my head--it beat so loud when you were by, it could not hear, perhaps.

But there was something of my father's philosophy left in me, and when I was alone it would speak, and be heard, too.

Even when I believed in you--because I wanted to--and half hoped that all my teaching was wrong, I made a bargain with myself.

I

told myself, quite calmly, that I knew perfectly well all the possibilities of the future.

That if I went forward with you, I went forward deliberately with open eyes, knowing what, logically, I might expect to find in the future.

Ignorance--that blissful comfort of so many women,--was denied me.

Still, the spell of Nature was upon me, and for a time I dreamed that a depth of passionate love like mine, a life of loyal devotion might wrap one man round, and keep him safe--might in fact, work a miracle--and make one polygamous man monogamous.

But, even while that hope was in my heart, reason rose up and mocked it, bidding me advance into the Future at my peril.

I did it, but I made a bargain with myself, I agreed to abide the consequences--and to abide them calmly."

"And during all those days when I supposed we were so near together--you showed me nothing of this that was in your heart."

"Men and women know very rarely anything of the great struggles that go on in the hearts of one another.

Besides, I knew how easily you would reply--naturally.

We are all on the defensive in this life.

It was with things deeper than words that I was dealing--the things one _does_--not says.

Even in the early days of our engagement I knew that I was not as essential to you as you were to me.

Life held other interests for you.

Even the flattery of other women still had its charm for you.

Young as I was, I said to myself: 'If you marry this man--with your eyes open--blame yourself, not him, if you suffer.'

I

do believe that I have been able to do that."

Shattuck was astride his chair again, his elbows on the back, his chin in his hands.

He no longer responded.

Words were dangerous.

His lips were pressed close together, and there was a long deep line between his eyes.

"My love for you absorbed every other emotion of my life.

But I seemed to lack some of the qualities that aid to reconcile other wives to life.

I seemed to be without mother-love.

My children were dear to me only because they were yours.

The maternal passion, which in so many women is the absorbing emotion of life, was denied me.

My children were to me merely the tribute to posterity which Life had demanded of me as the penalty of your love--nothing more.

I must be singularly unfitted for marriage, because, when the hour came in which I felt that I was no longer your wife, your children seemed no longer mine.

They merely represented the next generation--born of me.

I know that this is very shocking.

I have become used to it,--and, it is the truth.

I have not blamed you, I could not--and be reasonable.

No man can be other than Nature plans or permits, but how I have pitied myself!

I have been through the tempest alone.

In spite of reason,--in spite of philosophy--I have suffered from jealousy, from shame, from rage, from self contempt.

But that is all past now."

She had not raised her voice, which seemed as without feeling as it was without emphasis.

She carefully examined her handkerchief corner by corner, and he noticed for the first time how thin her hands had become.

"Naturally," she went on in that colorless voice, "my first impulse was to be done with life.

But I could not bring myself to that, much as I desired it.

It would have left you such a wretched memory of me.

You could never have pardoned me the scandal--and I felt that I had at least the right to leave you a decent recollection of me."

Shattuck's head fell forward on his arms.

--The idea of denial or protest did not occur to him.

The steady voice went monotonously on.

"I could not bear to humble you in the eyes of others even by forcing you to face a scandal.

I could not bear to humble you in your own eyes by letting you suspect that I knew the truth.

I could not bring myself to disturb the outward respectability of your life by interrupting its outward calm.

To be absolutely honest--though I had lost you, I could not bring myself to give you up,--as I felt I must, if I let any one discover--most of all you--what I knew.

So, like a coward, I lived on, becoming gradually accustomed to the idea that my day was past, but knowing that the moment I was forced to speak, I would be forced to move on out of your life.

Singularly enough, as I grew calm, I grew to respect this other woman.

I could not blame her for loving you.

I ended by admiring her.

I had known her so well--she was such a proud woman!

I looked back at my marriage and saw the affair as it really was.

I had not _sold_ myself to you exactly--I had loved you too much to bargain in that way; nevertheless, the marriage had been a bargain.

In exchange for your promise to protect and provide for me,--to feed me, clothe me, share your fortune with me, and give me your name, I had given you myself,--openly sanctioned by the law, of course--I was too great a coward to have done it otherwise, in spite of the fact that the law gives that same permission to almost any one who asks for it."

"Naomi," he groaned from his covered mouth, "what ghastly philosophy."

"Isn't that the marriage law?

How much better am I after all than the poor girl in the street, who is forced to it by misery?

To be sure, I believe there is some farcical phrase in the bargain about promising to love none other,--a bare-faced attempt to outwit Nature,--at which Nature laughs.

Yet this other woman, proud, high-minded, unselfish, hitherto above reproach, had given herself for love alone--with everything to lose and nothing to gain.

I have come to doubt myself.

I

have had my day.

For years it was an enviable one.

No woman can hope for more.

What right have I to stand in the way of another woman's happiness?

A happiness no one can value better than I, who so long wore it in security.

I bore my children in peace, with the divine consolation of your devotion about me.

What right have I to deny another woman the same joy?"

Shattuck sprang to his feet.

"It's not true!"

he gasped.

"It's not true!"

The woman never even raised her eyes.

She went on carefully inspecting the filmy bit of lace in her hands.

"It _is_ true," she replied.

"Never mind how I discovered it.

I know it.

That is why she has gone abroad alone.

I did not speak until I had to.

I am a coward, but not enough of one to bear the thought of her alone in a foreign country with mind and emotions clouded.

I may be cowardly enough to wish that I had never found it out,--I am not coward enough to keep silent any longer."

A torrent of words rushed to the man's lips, but he was too wise to make excuses.

Yet there were excuses.

Any fair-minded judge would have said so.

But he knew better than to think that for one moment they would be excuses in the mind of this woman.

Besides, the first man's excuse for the first sin has never been viewed with much respect under the modern civilization.

He felt her slowly rise to her feet, and when he raised his head to look at her--not yet fully realizing what had happened to him--all emotion seemed to have become so foreign to her face, that he felt as if she were already a stranger to him.

She took a last look round the room.

Her eyes seemed to devour every detail.

"I shall find means to give you your freedom at once."

"You will actually leave me--go away?"

"Can we two remain together now?"

"But your children?"

"Your children, Dick--I have forgotten that I have any.

I have had my life.

You have still yours to live."

She swept by him down the long room, everything in which was so closely associated with her.

Before she reached the door, he was there--and his back against it.

She stopped, but she did not look at him.

If she could have read the truth in his face, it would have told her that she had never been loved as she was at that moment.

All that she had been in her loyalty, her nobility, was so much a part of this man's life.

What, compared to that, were petty sins, or big ones?

He saw the past as a drowning man sees the panorama of his existence.

Yet he knew that everything he could say would be powerless to move her.

It was useless to remind her of their happy years together.

They could never be happy again with this between them.

It would be equally useless to tell her that this other woman had known, but too well, that he would never desert his wife for her.

Had he not betrayed her?

Of what use to tell her how he had repented his folly, that he could never understand it himself?

There were the facts, and Nature, and his wife's philosophy against him.

And he had dared be gay the moment the steamer slid into the channel!

Was that only this morning?

It seemed to be in the last century.

She approached, and stretched her hand toward the door.

He did not move.

"Don't stop me," she pleaded.

"Don't make it any harder than it is.

Let me take with me the consolation of a decent life together--a decent life decently severed."

He made one last appeal--he opened his arms wide to her.

She shrank back with a shudder, crying out that he should spare her her own contempt--that he should leave her the power to seek peace--and her voice had such a tone of terror, as she recoiled from him, that he felt how powerless any protest would be.

He stepped aside.

Without looking at him she quickly opened the door and passed out.

* * * * * The Divorcée nervously rolled up her manuscript.

The usual laugh was not forthcoming.

No one dared.

Men can't rough-house that kind of a woman.

After a moment's silence the Critic spoke up.

"You were right to _read_ that story.

It is not the sort of thing that lends itself to narrating.

Of course you might have acted it out, but you were wise not to."

"I can't help it--got to say it," said the Journalist: "What a horrid woman!"

The Divorcée looked at him in amazement.

"How can you say that?"

she exclaimed.

"I thought I had made her so reasonable.

Just what all women ought to be, and what none of us are."

"Thank God for that," said the Journalist.

"I'd as lief live in a world created and run by George Bernard Shaw as in one where women were like that."

"Come, come," interrupted the Doctor, who had been eyeing her profile with a curious half amused expression, all through the reading: "Don't let us get on that subject to-night.

A story is a story.

You have asked, and you have received.

None of you seem to really like any story but your own, and I must confess that among us, we are putting forth a strange baggage."

"On the contrary," said the Critic, "I think we are doing pretty well for a crowd of amateurs."

"You are not an amateur," laughed the Journalist, "and yours was the worst yet."

"I deny it," said the Critic.

"Mine had real literary quality, and a very dramatic climax."

"Oh, well, if death is dramatic--perhaps.

You are the only one up to date who has killed his heroine."

"No story is finished until the heroine is dead," said the Journalist.

"This woman,--I'll bet she had another romance."

"Did she?"

asked the Critic of the Divorcée, who was still nervously rolling her manuscript in both hands.

"I don't know.

How should I?

And if I did I shouldn't tell you.

It isn't a true story, of course."

And she rose from her chair and walked away into the moonlight.

"Do you mean to say," ejaculated the Violinist, who admired her tremendously, "that she made that up in the imagination she carries around under that pretty fluffy hair?

I'd rather that it were true--that she had picked it up somewhere."

As we began to prepare to go in, the Doctor looked down the path to where the Divorcée was still standing.

After a moment's hesitation he took her lace scarf from the back of her chair, and strolled after her.

The Sculptor shrugged his shoulders with such a droll expression that we all had to smile.

Then we went indoors.

"Well," said the Doctor, as he joined her--she told me about it afterwards--"was that the way it happened?"

"No, no," replied the Divorcée, petulantly.

"That is not a bit the way it happened.

That is the way I wish it had happened.

Oh, no. I was brought up to believe in the proprietary rights in marriage, and I did what I thought became a womanly woman.

I asserted my rights, and made a common or garden row."

The Doctor laughed, as she stamped her foot at him.

"Pardon--pardon," said he.

"I was only going to say 'Thank God.'

You know I like it best that way."

"I wish I had not told the old story," she said pettishly.

"It serves me quite right.

Now I suppose they've got all sorts of queer notions in their heads."

"Nonsense," said the Doctor.

"All authors, you know, run the risk of getting mixed up in their romances--think of Charlotte Brontë."

"I'm not an author, and I am going to bed,--to repent of my folly," and she sailed into the house, leaving the Doctor gazing quizzically after her.

Before she was out of hearing, he called to her: "I say, you haven't changed a bit since '92." She heard but she did not answer.