Chapter V: A Husband

I

Yet something was hurting Gage Flandon. He had tried to decide that he was not getting enough exercise, that he was smoking too much, not sleeping enough. But petty reforms in those things did not help him. He felt surging through him, strange restlessness, curious probing dissatisfactions. He was angry at himself because he was in such a state; he was morbidly angry with his wife because she could not assuage what he was feeling nor share it with him.

Everywhere he was baffled by his passion for Helen. After six years of married life, after they had been through birth, parenthood together, surely this state was neurotic. Affection, yes, that was proper. But not this constant sense of her, this desire to absorb her, own her completely and segregate her completely. He knew the feeling had been growing on him lately since her friend had come to the city, but his resentment was not against Margaret. It was directed against his wife and that he could not reason this into justice gnawed at him.

He was spending a great deal of time thinking about what was wrong with women. He would hit upon a phrase, a clever sentence that solved everything. And then he was back where he had begun. He could resolve nothing in phrases. He and Helen would discuss feminism, masculinism, sex, endlessly, and always end as antagonists--or as lovers, hiding from their own antagonism. But they could not leave the subjects alone. They tossed them back and forth, wearily, impatiently. Always over the love for each other which they could not deny, hung this cloud of discussion, making every caress suspected of a motive, a “reaction.”

When Gage had been sent at twelve years of age to a boys’ military preparatory school, it had been definitely done to “harden him.” He was a dreamy little boy, not in the least delicate, but with a roving imagination, a tendency to say “queer things” which had not suited his healthy perfectly grown body, his father felt. Some one had suspected him of having hidden artistic abilities. His parents were intelligent people and they tried that out. He was given instructions in music on the piano and the violin. Nothing came of them but ridges on the piano where he had kicked it in his impatience at being able to draw no melodies from it. With infinite patience they tried to see if he had talent for drawing. He had none. So, having exhausted their researches for artistic talent, his parents decided that there was a flaw in his make-up which a few years contact with “more manly boys” might correct. They prided themselves on the result. He succumbed utterly to all the conventions of what makes a manly boy and came home true to form.

In college the quirk came out again once in a while. But Gage never became markedly queer. Impossible for an all-American half-back to do that. And he never mixed with the “queer ones.” What eccentricities he had, what flights of imagination he took were strictly on his own.

In due course he was admitted to the bar and on the heels of that came Helen. Those who saw him in his pursuit of Helen said that he seemed possessed. For once his imagination had found an outlet. For once all those desires which rose above his daily life and his usual companions had found a channel through which they could pour themselves. Eager for life as Helen was, full of dreams, independences, fresh from her years at college, she could not help being swept under by the torrent of desire and worship that he became. They soared away together--they lost themselves in marriage, in the marvel of child creation.

The war came. Gage met it gravely, a little less spread-eagle than most of his friends. He had a year in France and came back with a fallen enthusiasm. He never talked about that. He had plunged into money making. The small fortune his father had given him on his marriage had been absorbed in starting a home and Helen had nothing of her own. They needed a great deal of money and Gage got it, trampling into politics, into business, practicing law well all the time. He was now thirty-eight and had accumulated a remarkable store of influence and power. Very close to the Congressman from his district, keen and far sighted, as honest in keeping promises as he was ruthless in dealing with political obstructionists, he was recognized as the key man to his very important district. He knew politics as he knew law but he built no ideals on it. It was perhaps his very thorough knowledge of the deviousness of its methods which made him reluctant to have Helen meddle with it. For although he had accepted the suffrage of women as a political phenomenon which had to be taken in hand and dealt with, he had no belief that the old game would change much.

He nearly always looked his full age. His face was one of those into which deep lines come early, well modeled, but with no fineness of detail. And his large built body, always carelessly dressed, was the same. Yet there were times, Helen knew, when his eyes became plaintive and wondering and he looked as the little boy who was sent away to be “hardened” must have looked. Only he was learning to cover those times with a scowl.

He was finding that he could not quiet all the mental nightmares he had with his love for Helen. Because that love itself was infested by this strange new “woman problem.” What securities of opinion had been swept away by study, by war, what questions in him were left unsatisfied--those things were hidden in him. He had clung to love and faith in marriage. And now that stronghold was being attacked. He was hearing people who called it all fake, all false psychology. And he did not know how much Helen believed these people. He felt her restlessness in horror. He saw no direction in which she might go away from him where she would not meet destruction, where false, incomplete ideas would not ruin her. It was making him a reactionary.

For, because he had no solution himself, he was forced to fall back on negations. He denied everything, sank back into an idealism of the past.

“I liked that girl,” he said to his wife about Freda, “no fake.”

“None,” answered Helen. “I hoped you’d like her, Gage.”

“She says that the trouble with women is that they’ve lost the spirit of romance and that they’ve dug the romance out of men’s souls too.”

It was what he himself had said but it was easier to put to Helen in that way.

“Young thing--full of phrases.” His wife laughed lightly.

It was the night on which Freda and her mother were to dine with them. Gage, dressed before his wife, had dropped in to watch her. He loved to see her do her hair. She seemed exquisitely beautiful to him when she deftly parted and coiled the loose masses of it--more than beautiful--exquisitely woman. He loved to see the woman quality in her, not to awaken passion or desire but for the sense of wonder it gave him. He loved to cherish her.

“We’re all full of phrases,” he said, a little hurt already. “But she has something behind her phrases. She’s unspoiled yet by ideas.”

“She’s full of ideas. You should see the things that young modern reads. She’s without experience--without dogmas yet. But she’ll acquire those. At present she’s looking for beauty. You might show it to her, she may find it in Margaret; perhaps she’ll find it in her canting little mother.”

“She would find it in you if you’d let her see you.”

“Do you think I’m anything to copy? You seem dissatisfied so often, Gage.”

“Don’t, Helen.” He came over to where she sat and bent to lay his cheek against her hair. Her hand caressed his cheek and his eyes closed.

She wanted to ask him what would happen to them if they could not bury argument in a caress but she knew the torch that would be to his anger. He felt her lack of response.

“I’m not dissatisfied with you. I’m dissatisfied because I can’t have you completely to myself. I’m dissatisfied because you can’t sit beside me, above and indifferent to a host of silly men and women parading false ideas.”

“I’m not so sure they are false. I can’t get your conviction about everything modern. I want to try things out.”

“But, Helen, it’s not your game. Look--since Margaret came you’ve been dabbling in this--that--politics, clubs, what not. You are bored with me.”

“Impossible, darling. But you really mustn’t expect the good, old-fashioned, clinging vine stuff from me. I’m not any good at it. Now please hurry down, dear, and see if there are cigars and cigarettes, will you? And you’ll have to have your cocktail alone because if I had one before Mrs. Thorstad she’d think I was a Scarlet Woman.”

There was nothing for Gage to do but go with that familiar sense of failure.

After he had gone, Helen’s face lost some of its lightness and she sat looking at herself in the glass. Without admiration--without calculation. She was wondering how much of love was sex--wondering how she could fortify herself against the passing of the charms of sex--wondering why Gage had such a frantic dislike of women like Margaret who hadn’t succumbed to sex--wondering if that was the reason. She thought of the pretty Thorstad child. Gage liked her. That too might be a manifestation of vague unadmitted desire. She shivered a little. Such thoughts made her very cold. Then with a conscience smitten glance at her little porcelain clock she slipped into her dress and rang for the maid to hook it.

The nurse maid came and entertained Helen, as she helped her, with an account of the afternoon she had spent with Bennett and Peggy. Peggy had learned to count up to ten and Bennett was trying to imitate her. Helen wished she had heard them. She hated to miss any bit of the development of her fascinating children. It was a feeling that Margaret had told her she had better steel herself against.

II

It was a wonderful evening for Freda. In the thoroughly friendly atmosphere she expanded. She made it wonderful for Gage too. He had the sense of an atmosphere freed from all censoriousness of analysis. Freda was drinking in impressions, finding her way by feeling alone. He basked in the warm worshipful admiration she gave his wife.

They left early and Gage drove them home, leaving Freda at her hostess’ door with a promise to give her a real drive some day and an admonition not to fall in love with any young wastrel. Part of their bantering conversation had been about Freda’s falling in love and how completely she was to do it.

“I’ll let you look him over if you will, Mr. Flandon.”

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll see if he’s the right sort.”

He had told Helen he was going to drop in at the club for a few minutes and see if he could find a man he wanted to see. But the object of his search was not to be seen and Gage was about to leave the lounge when Walter Carpenter called him. Carpenter lived at the club. He was stretched in one of the long soft chairs before the fire, his back to the rest of the room. Gage stopped beside him.

“How’s everything?”

“So-so.”

Walter offered a cigar, and indicated a chair.

“No--I think I’ll go on home,” said Gage, taking the cigar.

“Better smoke it here.”

For all his casualness it was clear that Walter wanted company. Gage dropped into the nearby chair and they talked for a few minutes, without focusing on anything. Then Walter began.

“Wonderful girl, that Vassar friend of Helen’s.”

“Margaret Duffield? Think so?”

“I’ve never seen a girl I liked as much,” said Walter.

He said it in the cool, dispassionate way that he said most things, without any embarrassment. Embarrassments of all sorts had been sloughed off during the fifteen years of Walter’s business and social achievements. Gage looked at him frowningly.

“You don’t mean you’re serious--you?”

“Why not--I?” repeated Carpenter, grinning imperturably.

He didn’t look serious or at least impassioned, Gage might have said. His long figure was stretched out comfortably. It was slightly thickened about the waist, and his sleek hair was thinning as his waist was thickening. His calm, well-shaven face was as good looking as that of a well-kept, well-fed man of thirty-seven is apt to be. It was losing the sharpness and the vitality of youth but it did not yet have the permanent contours of its middle age. And it bore all the signs of healthy living and living that was not only for the sake of satisfying his appetites.

“Why--it never occurred to me,” said Gage, puffing a little harder at his cigar.

“That I might get married?”

“I don’t know. I rather thought that if you married you’d pick a different sort of a girl.”

“I might have done that a long time ago. I’ve seen enough sorts. No--I never have seen one before who really--”

He paused reflectively, unaccustomed in the language of emotion.

“She’s a fine looking girl.” Gage felt he must pay some tribute.

“She is fine looking. She has a face that you can’t forget--not for a minute.”

“But,” said Gage, “you must know that she’s the rankest kind of a woman’s righter--a feminist.”

“What’s a feminist?” asked Walter calmly.

“Damned if I know. It means anything any woman wants it to mean. It’s driven everybody to incoherence. But what I mean is that that kind of woman doesn’t make any concessions to--sex.”

They lifted the conversation away from Margaret into a generalization. Both of them wanted to talk about her but it couldn’t be done with her as an openly acknowledged example.

“Well,” answered Carpenter, “perhaps that was coming to us. Perhaps we were expecting women to make too many concessions to sex. There are a lot of uncultivated qualities in women you know. They can’t devote all their time to our meals and our children.”

“I don’t object to their devoting their time to anything they like. I do object to their scattering themselves, wearing themselves out on a lot of damned nonsense. Let them vote. Granted we’ve got to have a few female political hacks like this Thorstad woman. It won’t hurt her any. It’s all right for Mrs. Brownley--and that type of wise old girl--to play at politics. But for a woman--a young woman who ought to be finding out all the things in life that belong to her, who ought to be--letting herself go naturally--being a woman--for her to go in for a spellbinder’s career is depressing and worse.”

Walter smiled quizzically.

“Haven’t women always been just that, spellbinders? Isn’t that the job we gave them long ago? Haven’t women been spellbinders for thousands of years?”

“God knows they have,” said Gage.

He was silent for a moment, recollecting his argument, then plunged on.

“It was all right when it was instinctive and natural but now it’s so damned self-conscious. They’re picking all their instincts to pieces, reading Freud on sex, analyzing every honest caress, worrying about being submerged in homes and husbands. It’s wrecking, I tell you, Walter. It’s spoiling their grain. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s the women’s colleges that start it all. If I had my way I’d burn the things to the ground. They start all the trouble.”

Walter broke the silence again.

“The reason I wanted to talk to you was because some of the difficulties you suggest were simmering in my own mind. And it always seemed to me that you and Helen got away with the whole business so well. You’ve had children--you’ve managed to keep everything--haven’t you worked it out for yourself anyway?”

“You can’t work it out,” said Gage, impatiently, “by just having children. It doesn’t end the chapter.”

“It’s a difficult time.”

“It’s a rotten time. You know I can’t help feeling, Walter, that the women of this generation are potentially all that they claim to be actually. It isn’t that I’d deny them any chance. But to let them be guided by fakirs or by their own inexperience will land them in a worse mess than ever. Look at some of them who have achieved prominence-pictures in the New York Times anyway. Their very pictures show they are neurasthenic. Look at the books written about them that they feed on. Books which won’t allow a single natural normal impulse or fact of sex to go unanalyzed. Books which question every duty. Books which are merely tracts in favor of barrenness. Books written almost always by people who live abnormally. After a diet of that, can any woman live with a man wholesomely--can she keep her mind clear and fine?”

Walter shook his head--then laughed.

“Well--what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m not going to do a damned thing but growl about it, I suppose. As a matter of fact I don’t care what most women do. But when I see the fakirs lay their hands on Helen--Helen, who is about as perfect a woman--” he stopped abruptly, and then went on. “I’m not a very good person to talk to on this woman question. I’m balled up, you see. I only know that the trend is dangerous. They got their inch of political equality. Now they want an ell. They don’t want to be women any longer.”

“It’s all interesting,” answered Walter. “Of course, it’s difficult not to think in terms of one’s own experiences. Now I never have seen a woman like Miss Duffield. Of course I haven’t an idea that she’ll have me. But personally I’d be quite willing to trust to her terms if she did. I’ve never seen a woman of more essential honesty.”

They were disinclined to talk further. Gage, after a few trivialities, left Walter to his dream, conscious that what he had said had produced no disturbance or real question in the other’s mind. It was easy for one to transcend generalities with the wonderful possibilities of any particular case, Gage knew. He’d done it himself.

III

Unconsciously as he went toward his home, he was doing it again. He had never lost the magic of going home to his wife. Entering the still hall, where the single lamp cast tiny pools of light through the crystal chandelier, he was pervaded by her presence. Somewhere, awake or asleep, above that stairway, was Helen. The gentle fact of it put him at peace.

Her door was closed and he went softly past it to his own room. Then, in a dressing gown, he settled himself in an easy chair by a reading lamp, no book before him, cherishing that mental quiet which surrounded him.

Down the hall he heard her door open quietly and her footfall on the soft rug. She had heard him come in and was come to say good night. With a quick motion he turned out the light beside him and waited.

“Asleep, Gage?” She spoke softly, not to awaken him, if he were asleep.

“No--resting--here by the window.”

She found her way to him and he gathered her up in his arms.

“You wonderful bundle of relaxation! Have you any idea how I love you like this?”

“Do you know, Gage, I think that for all our bad moments that we are really happier than most people?”

“There’s no one in the world, dear, as happy as I am at this moment.”

“And it isn’t just because I’m--”

He bent his head to her, stifling her sentence.

“You mustn’t talk--don’t say it. It isn’t because of anything. It just is.”

“I know. And when it is--it swallows up the times when it isn’t.”

“Hush, sweetheart. Let’s not--talk. Let’s just rest.”

He felt her grow even easier in his arms. All the instinct for poetry in him, starved, without vehicle, sought to dominate the relentlessness of her mind, working, working in its tangles of thought. The meaning of his inexpressible love for her must come through his arms, must be compelling, tender. They sat together in the big chair enfolded in peace. And the same little secret thought ran from one to the other, comforting them. This is the best.