Chapter XIX: Mental Surgery

Margaret knew all about it now. From her point of view certain conventions of non-interference between husband and wife were so many links in the old chain. Undoubtedly it was not that she wanted to force Helen’s confidence. But to come upon Helen the Monday after that exhausting Sunday, come to her to say good-by and make plans for the future, and to find the splendid dignity and poise of the Helen she had been with in Chicago destroyed angered her. Helen had told her the facts. She had to tell some one, she told herself in a justification she felt bound to make in secret, and Margaret was at least a stranger in the city and moreover the only woman she knew who would not make the slightest impulse to carry her story to other ears.

Margaret, in immaculate white linen, looking as cool and competent as an operating surgeon, had listened. She heard the whole of the story, how Gage had changed--for that Helen insisted upon.

“He’s simply not himself. I suppose it’s the feeling he has towards the girl.”

“Don’t ‘the girl’ her, Helen. I’m not a bit sure of that part of the story. Somehow it’s too preposterous that Freda should be languishing somewhere waiting for Gage’s casual attention. I tell you that girl doesn’t languish. She’s not that kind. She’s the most magnificently unconscious modern you ever saw. She wouldn’t be any one’s mistress. She hasn’t that much dependence in her. Not for a minute. I simply don’t believe it.”

“She disappeared the day after he came back from the convention. And then he was away that week-end she was seen at the Roadside Inn.”

“I don’t believe she was ever seen there,” said Margaret.

Helen put her hand to her head.

“I don’t want to believe it, but if he won’t deny it--and isn’t it possible that the poor child’s run away even from him? If she should be going to have--oh, damn, I can’t say it even--” She broke off a little hysterically.

“No--I don’t believe that either.” But for all her stout words, Margaret sounded a little more dubious this time. “Let’s leave her out of it. What is there to do about you and Gage?”

“I despise my own incompetence of decision,” said Helen. “But I don’t know. I don’t know how to go through the business. It seems impossible that we’ve come to the edge of divorce but I can’t go on living with a man who acts as Gage does. I can’t, that is, with any measure of self-respect. And yet I look around and the very weight of detail--the tremendous business of unwinding a marriage--it seems then as if the quick flare-up of partings that you read about--the separations that never involve themselves with the machinery of complaints and retaining lawyers and distributing property and--moving vans--are quite fantastic. I wonder if it’s laziness which keeps me so fearful of the mass of detail, Margaret--”

“Of course you’re trivial on purpose, I suppose,” answered Margaret. “The things you speak of don’t really bother you.”

“Yes. Translated into more serious terms I suppose the thing that hurts is the terrible pain of cleavage between two people who have grown into each other for years.”

“More likely. Helen, I don’t want to probe, but do you want to live without Gage?”

Helen pondered.

“I don’t want to lose him. I feel dreadfully cheated--put upon. I didn’t want any of this. If I’d known that he was going to feel so outraged at the political venture I’d have stopped, I think, before I let it get to an impasse. But I’m afraid it’s that now. He and I were--well, there’s no use debauching myself with memories. No--I don’t think I want to lose him but even aside from this question of his disloyalty--this business with Freda Thorstad--he’s becoming impossible to live with. The children are noticing it. He doesn’t play with them as he used to. Goes off by himself. There’s no free and easy interchange between us at all. Of course he’s often flatly rude to me before the servants.”

“Suppose you gave up all the things he doesn’t like now, would that solve things?”

Helen shook her head.

“Not now. The thing has gone too far. We’ve been ugly to each other and we wouldn’t forget that. Besides I’m afraid I’d be resentful. There’s no reason why I should be completely subject to Gage’s slightest word. We can’t build on that basis.”

“What he wants,” said Margaret astutely, “is to have you subject to his dream.”

Helen smiled rather ruefully.

“He might wake up from his dream!”

“That’s the chance women have always taken--even the luckiest ones.”

“I don’t see that it’s any use for me to think over causes and rake up a justification here and a justification there anyway,” said Helen. “The only thing of vital importance is to decide whether I’m going to let events come as they will and be passive under them or whether I’m going to try to manage the events.”

“I shouldn’t think there’d be much choice there.”

“There is though. It’s so easy to sit back and say, ‘I’m trapped. I’ll just have to take whatever fate sends. There’s nothing I can do.’”

“But you won’t, for there are no ends of things you could do. It’s complicated of course. If you leave Gage, of course it puts a crimp in your political possibilities just now, not that the fact of separation would much matter but of course up to this point your political reputation has been partly builded on Gage’s name.”

“And I can’t trade on his name and not live with him. But then I can’t trade on his name anyway. I must define a position and take what is coming to me as an individual and give up the rest.”

“No. It’s complicated too by money. I haven’t any, you know, Margaret--and Gage has made a lot but we’ve lived rather up to the limit of it. I don’t believe he stands awfully well financially. If we are to separate things would go pretty much to pieces in every direction.”

“Very much,” said Gage. He had come in quietly and stood looking at them in a kind of derisive anger. “I’m sorry to break in on your conference, and on this delightful exhibition of my wife’s loyalty but since we are all here, let’s talk it over.”

He sat down elaborately, his eyes on Margaret, ignoring his wife fixedly.

“Have you made up your mind what we should do, Miss Duffield?”

“Don’t be insulting, Gage,” said Margaret, “it’s so unnecessary. I haven’t been interfering with your affairs any more than was necessary.”

“Than was necessary to release Helen from the chains of marriage?” Gage laughed. “Well, your work is done. As far as I’m concerned she’s released. You may tell her, since you are in charge of our affairs, that I will leave her as soon as possible--and that is very soon--and that whatever financial arrangement is possible shall be made for her and the children. She is correct in saying that my affairs are in a bad way. Mr. Sable, from whom I have just separated in business, can tell her more about that. She might care to engage him to represent her in any action you might see fit for her to take.”

Helen had risen to her feet, quite white.

“Stop!” she cried. “Don’t you dare keep on insulting me. You’re mad--abnormal--”

Gage bowed vaguely in her direction and continued speaking to Margaret.

“Tell her that she is right. I am mad and abnormal and that she has made me so, instigated by you. Excuse me now, won’t you?”

He went upstairs but he could hear through the floor the swift, staccato, shrieking sobs of Helen’s hysteria, hear the whisper of a maid to the nurse in the back hall, hear a murmur which must be the calming voice of Margaret. He paced viciously up and down--up and down.

Yet he had come home, driven by an invigorating impulse which had come to him inexplicably, perhaps born of pity and sudden insight into Helen’s mind, come home to ask her forgiveness, explain what Freda Thorstad had told him and ask her to go away with him for a little while until their minds both cleared. The impulse had risen in his throat--it had choked him with delight and fear lest she should not be home. And then through the sunroom doors he saw them, two calm women, talking together, making and receiving confidences, uncovering him, dissecting him, and as he stood still and let the blackness of rage sweep over him again he had heard Helen tell this stranger, this inimical stranger, of his financial condition. The sense of outrage overmastered him.

After a little it was quiet downstairs and he decided to go to the city again, going downstairs, looking straight ahead of him. He wanted to see the children, to have their reception of him ease this last sharp hurt. They were in the garden of course, and they greeted him with their usual shouts of delight.

“Well,” he thought, as he bent down to caress them, “I can’t stop now. I can’t stop now.”

He sat down on the garden bench and took the children on his knees, the boy and girl, so sturdy and happy, with fat brown knees and thick soft hair. They were full of comments and questions. Peggy was three and Bennett just eighteen months older. It was going to hurt terribly to break away from them. Sable had said, “You can’t act as though you didn’t have a family dependent on you.” He had shown Sable that he could act that way, that the family dependent on him was not going to force him to knuckle under. He stroked Peggy’s hair. How restful it was--if he could only stay here in this sheltered little garden with the children who had no tangles in their minds--if Helen would come out as she used to come out last summer and sit with him while they talked and planned of the beautiful things ahead for the children and their initiations into living.

Helen had deserted. She had gone off notoriety seeking. She preferred to sit in that room talking disloyalty to that woman to whose hard influence she had subjected herself--Helen was driving him out.

He kissed the children sternly and went back through the house. In the hall Helen met him. Her face was ravaged by hysterics, red hollows under her eyes, mouth pulled out of shape. It hurt to regard it.

“Where are you going, Gage?”

For a moment he was gentle.

“Downtown. I’ll not be back till late. There’s no use trying to talk. We are killing each other.” Then he thought of Margaret Duffield, listening perhaps and loosening his wife’s hands from his shoulders, where she had placed them, he went out.

* * * * *

But that was not the only crisis Margaret had to meet that day. She was eager to go back to New York. There was no possible work left for her to do and she wanted to get away from St. Pierre. She did not tell Helen that she was planning to go in a few days as she had told her landlady that morning. When she left the Flandon house Helen was quite calm. With her fine power of organization she had already decided that the best temporary thing to do was to accept Gage’s actions and see how far he would go, allowing her action to be modified by that later. Margaret looked rather pale. The reasonableness of her own mind was bound to be affected somehow by this drama through which she had passed and in which she had been forced to play so disagreeable a part. Perhaps it showed chiefly in the slight hardness of her attitude toward Walter Carpenter that night.

She never seemed to attack that decision squarely. She seemed to try to deny it a right to confront her. And yet, definitely, constantly, with less impatience than a younger lover and vastly more skill than a less intellectual one, Carpenter made himself felt. Now and then in their discussions and in their arguments, he destroyed some reason against their marriage. Her defenses had been made very weak. She had no argument against the lack of liberty in marriage which he could not destroy. He would grant anything. Indeed he asked only for the simplest, most unadorned marriage bond--and companionship which she had admitted she enjoyed with him. She might retain her own name if she liked without any altercation--might leave him for months at a time--he let her frighten him with no such threats. He offered too, more leisure for thought than she had ever had in the pressure of earning her own living. She had told him a little of what it meant to always need all the money she had in the bank--to do many things and yet never have any feeling of ease, to fear dependency. “It would mean a charitable hospital or going to a remote little Pennsylvania town to an aunt who lived with my mother until she died and who lives on in the almost worthless little place where I was born.” When she told Walter that, he had almost won her, so absorbed were they both in the pity and dread of her loneliness. Then again there leapt between them some deep-rooted fear, some instinct, some dread pulling Margaret back to her little island of celibacy.

It was far from an unpleasant, bickering companionship that they had. Margaret, at thirty, past all the desires of adolescence, informed without experience, had given Gregory nothing and had only been disturbed and made nervous by him, even while she appreciated his fine fire and ardors. Carpenter satisfied, soothed her. They had the same shynesses, the same dread of absurdities in themselves. And Margaret was afraid that she might be lonely without him and that too worried her. She did not want to be lonely for any one. So she told him and he laughed and ventured to bring her hand to his lips and hold it there. She did not draw it away, perhaps because she was reasonable, perhaps because she was not.

To-night he talked of Gage, reflecting the gossip of the men of Gage’s acquaintance. With them the fact of the severing of the firm of Sable and Flandon was a subject of much speculation. Walter was worried about it, in his own quiet fashion. Gage and Helen were both his close friends.

“Talking won’t do any good,” advised Margaret.

“Talking never did do any good with a man. It drives him into himself, and that’s usually unhealthy. I mean the sort of talking which is full of advice, of course--or of prohibition.”

“Yet some of you ought to do something with Gage Flandon before he goes straight to pieces.” Margaret said nothing of what had happened that afternoon.

“Yes,” said Walter absently, “he’s been going to pieces obviously. But let’s not talk about him. Let’s talk about ourselves, Margaret.”

They were driving through the summer night, trying to get all the coolness possible. It was soft warm darkness but the swift car made a wind which blew back upon them, laden with clover smells, deeply sweet. All the elaborate mental approaches which Walter had made to the girl he wanted to marry were abandoned. He stopped the car and put his arm around her, not supplicating but as if the time had come for concession.

“About ourselves. We talk too much impersonal stuff, Margaret. It’s great fun but there’s more to be done than talk. We must begin on the other things. We know each other’s minds now. Let’s know each other’s feelings.”

It may have been the night, the darkness, the remoteness of the country road which made him so bold. He tipped her face up to his and kissed her eagerly, quite different now from the calm mannered man who had sat so calmly in discussion with her night after night, who had squired her so formally, who had made love to her mind and tried to capture her intellect but never more, except for those two easily restrained outbreaks.

She stiffened like an embarrassed school girl, her hands pressed against his chest--

“Please don’t, Walter--”

“Foolish girl,” he said gently, “you mustn’t tie yourself up so. Let your mind ride for a minute and just remember that we love each other, just as every one in the world wants to love and be loved.”

All the while he talked, urging her, demanding her, he held her against him, unrelaxed.

“I love you,” he told her. “And I want to be--oh, unspeakably commonplace about it. I want to indulge myself in a lot of emotions that are as old as the hills and as glorious. But I want you with me, darling.”

Still she did not speak. He let her go a little and held her shoulders, searching for her eyes in the dimness.

“You do love me, don’t you? Why, I’ve seen it for weeks. I’ve seen a look in your face when I’ve come in--it isn’t boasting, dear, it’s just a wonderful confidence I have to-night.”

She freed her hands and clasped them tightly in each other. They seemed the index of some passionate inhibition, some repression, which was charged with nervousness. Her easy freedom had deserted her, and every muscle seemed drawn taut.

“Oh, my dear,” he pressed her, “don’t be so afraid. I won’t take advantage of the fact you care for me. Is it that which holds you back--that worry about making concessions to a man? Everything I’ve ever said I’ve meant. I respect every militant inch of you. I love you just as you are and for it. But above all that--beyond it--there’s more and hasn’t the time come for the least bit of abandonment?”

“Why?” Her voice was low, not as firm in its tones as it was wont to be.

“Why?” Carpenter repeated her question, “Why? Because we love each other or we don’t. And we can’t love at arms’ length, dear. We’ve got to be close, trustful, together. You do like me, don’t you, Margaret?”

“You know I do.”

“And you know I love you. Won’t you come a little way to meet me? I’m so sure you can trust me. I’m so sure we could be happy. Just let your mind rest. Let yourself go a little.”

Her mood was chilling his. He tried to gather up the shreds of the impetuosity that had first driven him to embrace her.

“Let’s not talk,” he said again, almost plaintively, “Can’t we just--rest in each other?”

“But why are you afraid of talk?” she protested.

He dropped his hands from her shoulders.

“Have I been afraid? Haven’t we talked on every conceivable subject? Haven’t we said enough to understand each other perfectly?”

“Then--”

“Margaret, dear, we’re at it again. This is what I protest--dragging argument into every natural emotion. I don’t want to be mind to your mind to-night. I don’t want to reason or even think--I just want to be man to your woman and caress you without thought.”

But the verve had gone out of his words and as it went she seemed to regain her confidence. He made a last attempt to bring back his spirit. But his embrace seemed to stiffen her. He withdrew his arm and sat tapping on the steering wheel.

“When will you marry me, Margaret?”

No impetuousness in his voice now, no romance. It met hers in calmness.

“I don’t know.”

“You must know. I can’t stand it any longer. You must or you must drive me away. There’s no sense in further talk. You know I’ll exact nothing but the right to be near you. But I must have that. I must know. It isn’t as if I were younger and could rebound from one love into another. You’ve got me. I don’t think of anything else. You color every bit of work I do--every bit of thinking. I’ll trust to your terms. I’ve spent weeks building up my theory of marriage to suit your desires and visions. I don’t want to play upon your sympathies but I’ve got to have you, Margaret--or not.”

He sounded very discouraged, very humble, very desperate.

“I think I’d disappoint you, Walter.”

The pity in her voice and her own discouragement made him turn to her again but she held out a hand to meet his and he stayed, letting her clasp his hand loosely.

“I’d be just like this all the time. You think I’d change--under emotion--when we were married. I don’t think I would. You don’t know how all the things I’ve thought and seen have influenced me. I couldn’t go into marriage believing in it much. I couldn’t--go through it--trusting it much. And when I was cold and I’d nearly always be that way, you’d be disappointed if not angry. And if I did do as you say--relax--I’d be spoiling it by not trusting my own feeling. Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I almost give in and then some devil of analysis comes and prods me into a watch on myself? I haven’t anything to give, Walter--except just what you’ve had. And the reason I can’t marry you is because while you say and I say that companionship is enough we both know it isn’t all you’d want. And it’s all you’d find. It’s all I can give to any man.”

“But, my God, Margaret, women and men have to marry--.”

“I know. It’s all right for other women--most other women. I’m not speaking for them now. They can keep reasonable and still have enough feeling to transcend reason now and then--carry them through it.” She still held his hand in a kind of cold comfort and he could feel her fingers tighten. “I’ve tried to have feeling lately, Walter--tried to see if I could find enough--and that kind of feeling isn’t there. I can’t--I can’t--don’t ask me.”

She withdrew her hand now and sat looking straight ahead of her. A cloud slipped past the moon and as the earth brightened in the cold white light Walter, turning to look at her saw her quiet and rigid, tears in her open eyes, a slim statue of what she claimed to be, sterility of feeling for him or any man.

“I’m afraid that it’s true,” he said. “Perhaps you can’t.”

At that, coming as a terribly dreary acceptance, she let the sobs come and for a long while she wept, her head in her own hands. Perhaps she wept for him, perhaps for herself. He did not offer to touch her again--as if her dearth of feeling had spread to him in those few minutes. When at last she straightened herself again, he started the car and they sped silently back through the country towards St. Pierre.

“Good-by, then,” he said, as they reached her door and he unlocked it.

“Good-by.”

She saw his face, heavy and lined and stern and it seemed to hurt her cruelly.

“I’ve cheated you,” she said pitifully, “but it’s been myself too. It is myself.”

He hesitated. For a moment he seemed ready to try again and then he saw the pity in her face stiffen into resistance. Bending, he kissed her lightly.

“Nothing I can do for you?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

She heard his car back away from the door. As long as she could hear it she stood listening. Then with swift definiteness she went to her closet and pulled out the trunk standing there.