Book: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3
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Winston Churchill >> A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3
"It's in the country!" she exclaimed.
To lunch at Delmonico's for eight dollars and live in Rivington
Howard appeared disturbed. More than that, he appeared astonished,
solicitous.
"Why, what's the matter, Honora?" he asked. "I thought you'd like it.
It's a brand new house, and I got Lily Dallam to furnish it. She's a
wonder on that sort of thing, and I told her to go ahead--within reason.
I talked it over with your aunt and uncle, and they agreed with me you'd
much rather live out there for a few years than in a flat."
"In a flat!" repeated Honora, with a shudder.
"Certainly," he said, flicking his ashes out of the window. "Who do you
think I am, at my age? Frederick T. Maitland, or the owner of the
Brougham Building?"
"But--Howard," she protested, "why didn't you talk it over with me?"
"Because I wanted to surprise you," he replied. "I spent a month and a
half looking for that house. And you never seemed to care. It didn't
occur to me that you would care--for the first few years," he added, and
there was in his voice a note of reproach that did not escape her. "You
never seemed inclined to discuss business with me, Honora. I didn't think
you were interested. Dallam and I are making money. We expect some day to
be on Easy Street--so to speak--or Fifth Avenue. Some day, I hope, you
can show some of these people the road. But just now what capital we have
has to go into the business."
Strangely enough, in spite of the intensity of her disappointment, she
felt nearer to her husband in that instant than at any time since their
marriage. Honora, who could not bear to hurt any one's feelings, seized
his hand repentantly. Tears started in her eyes.
"Oh, Howard, I must seem to you very ungrateful," she cried. "It was such
a--such a surprise. I have never lived in the country, and I'm sure it
will be delightful--and much more healthful than the city. Won't you
forgive me?"
If he had known as much about the fluctuations of the feminine
temperament as of those of stocks, the ease with which Honora executed
this complete change of front might have disturbed him. Howard, as will
be seen, possessed that quality which is loosely called good nature. In
marriage, he had been told (and was ready to believe), the wind blew
where it listed; and he was a wise husband who did not spend his time in
inquiry as to its sources. He kissed her before he helped her out of the
carriage. Again they crossed the North River, and he led her through the
wooden ferry house on the New Jersey side to where the Rivington train
was standing beside a platform shed.
There was no parlour car. Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours. That
there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.
After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
she had been ignorant that morning. They alighted at an old red railroad
station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
road. They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
in a very new gutter on the right.
"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
money to pay the hackman.
Honora looked around her. Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way of
red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
tracery against the orange-red of the western sky. On both sides of this
centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
houses. There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a raised
terrace and about two hundred feet apart. Beyond them, to the northward,
Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth hardwood,
interspersed with a few cedars.
Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
drawback. If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design to
make it appear imposing. It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
wood-surrounded panes in the roof. There was a large pillared porch on
its least private side--namely, the front. A white-capped maid stood in
the open doorway and smiled at Honora as she entered.
Honora walked through the rooms. There was nothing intricate about the
house; it was as simple as two times four, and really too large for her
and Howard. Her presents were installed, the pictures and photograph
frames and chairs, even Mr. Isham's dining-room table and Cousin
Eleanor's piano. The sight of these, and of the engraving which Aunt Mary
had sent on, and which all her childhood had hung over her bed in the
little room at home, brought the tears once more to her eyes. But she
forced them back bravely.
These reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the little maid
announcing that tea was ready, and bringing her two letters. One was from
Susan Holt, and the other, written in a large, slanting, and angular
handwriting, was signed Lily Dallam. It was dated from New York.
"My dear Honora," it ran, "I feel that I must call you so, for Sid and
Howard, in addition to being partners, are such friends. I hesitated so
long about furnishing your house, my dear, but Howard insisted, and said
he wished to surprise you. I am sending you this line to welcome you, and
to tell you that I have arranged with the furniture people to take any or
all things back that you do not like, and exchange them. After all, they
will be out of date in a few years, and Howard and Sid will have made so
much money by that time, I hope, that I shall be able to leave my
apartment, which is dear, and you will be coming to town."
Honora laid down the sheet, and began to tidy her hair before the glass
of the highly polished bureau in her room. A line in Susan's letter
occurred to her: "Mother hopes to see you soon. She asked me to tell you
to buy good things which will last you all your life, and says that it
pays."
The tea-table was steaming in the parlour in front of the wood fire in
the blue tiled fireplace. The oak floor reflected its gleam, and that of
the electric lights; the shades were drawn; a slight odour of steam heat
pervaded the place. Howard, smoking a cigarette, was reclining on a sofa
that evidently was not made for such a purpose, reading the evening
newspapers.
"Well, Honora," he said, as she took her seat behind the tea-table, "you
haven't told me how you like it. Pretty cosey, eh? And enough spare room
to have people out over Sundays."
"Oh, Howard, I do like it," she cried, in a desperate attempt--which
momentarily came near succeeding to convince herself that she could have
desired nothing more. "It's so sweet and clean and new--and all our own."
She succeeded, at any rate, in convincing Howard. In certain matters, he
was easily convinced.
"I thought you'd be pleased when you saw it, my dear," he said.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT UNATTACHED
It was the poet Cowper who sang of domestic happiness as the only bliss
that has survived the Fall. One of the burning and unsolved questions of
to-day is,--will it survive the twentieth century? Will it survive rapid
transit and bridge and Woman's Rights, the modern novel and modern drama,
automobiles, flying machines, and intelligence offices; hotel, apartment,
and suburban life, or four homes, or none at all? Is it a weed that will
grow anywhere, in a crevice between two stones in the city? Or is it a
plant that requires tender care and the water of self-sacrifice? Above
all, is it desirable?
Our heroine, as may have been suspected, has an adaptable temperament.
Her natural position is upright, but like the reed, she can bend
gracefully, and yields only to spring back again blithely. Since this
chronicle regards her, we must try to look at existence through her eyes,
and those of some of her generation and her sex: we must give the four
years of her life in Rivington the approximate value which she herself
would have put upon it--which is a chapter. We must regard Rivington as a
kind of purgatory, not solely a place of departed spirits, but of those
which have not yet arrived; as one of the many temporary abodes of the
Great Unattached.
No philosophical writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change
--as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog--between the lover and
the husband. An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this
change is inevitable: some husbands--and some wives are fortunate enough
to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern
civilization. Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it is difficult to
say, but we have got to consider him henceforth as a husband; one who
regards his home as a shipyard rather than the sanctuary of a goddess; as
a launching place, the ways of which are carefully greased, that he may
slide off to business every morning with as little friction as possible,
and return at night to rest undisturbed in a comfortable berth, to ponder
over the combat of the morrow.
It would be inspiring to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling
garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to
battle and victory. Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and
most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning. There was a
period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal; a
second period when she appeared at the foot of the stairs to kiss him as
he was going out of the door; a third when, clad in an attractive
dressing-gown, she waved him good-by from the window; and lastly, a
fourth, which was only marked by an occasional protest on his part, when
the coffee was weak.
"I'd gladly come down, Howard, if it seemed to make the least difference
to you," said Honora. "But all you do is to sit with your newspaper
propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
question. You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
early."
"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.
"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
reproachfully; "I'd die. And then I am always having to get new cooks for
you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs. Men have
no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just wish you had
to go to those horrid intelligence offices. You wouldn't stay in
Rivington ten days. And all the good cooks drink."
Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
somebody. The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
the country.
It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun. And there is generally an
afterglow. In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
was touched with a certain novelty. There was a new runabout and a horse
which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
husband. On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed. But after a while certain male
competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued. Sunday, after
his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field
day. Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold Howard
taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will be dug
up and transplanted. The soil was congenial. He played poker on the train
with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them famously.
And it was to him an enigma--when occasionally he allowed his thoughts to
dwell upon such trivial matters--why Honora was not equally congenial
with the wives.
There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many
stories could be written: people with loves and fears and anxieties and
joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.
There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances
at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents
--like Honora's--came from afar, from family centres formed in a social
period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and
consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there
were--inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the
survival of the fittest--commercial calamities, and the heartrending
search for new employment.
Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in
proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners. And Honora
returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman's
Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion. In the
evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked
business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the
cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.
Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much
as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining
in Rivington the rest of their lives!
Honora was kind to these ladies. As we know, she was kind to everybody.
She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become
her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in
fashionable restaurants. Their range of discussion included babies and
Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee. It would be
interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers
met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever
to depart. The time and manner of this departure were matters to be
determined in the future.
It would be interesting to know, likewise, just at what period the
intention of moving away from Rivington became fixed in Honora's mind.
Honora circumscribed, Honora limited, Honora admitting defeat, and this
chronicle would be finished. The gods exist somewhere, though many
incarnations may, be necessary to achieve their companionship. And no
prison walls loom so high as to appall our heroine's soul. To exchange
one prison for another is in itself something of a feat, and an argument
that the thing may be done again. Neither do the wise ones beat
themselves uselessly against brick or stone. Howard--poor man!--is
fatuous enough to regard a great problem as being settled once and for
all by a marriage certificate and a benediction; and labours under the
delusion that henceforth he may come and go as he pleases, eat his
breakfast in silence, sleep after dinner, and spend his Sundays at the
Rivington Golf Club. It is as well to leave him, at present, in blissful
ignorance of his future.
Our sympathies, however, must be with Honora, who has paid the price for
heaven, and who discovers that by marriage she has merely joined the
ranks of the Great Unattached. Hitherto it had been inconceivable to her
that any one sufficiently prosperous could live in a city, or near it and
dependent on it, without being socially a part of it. Most momentous of
disillusions! With the exception of the Sidney Dallams and one or two
young brokers who occasionally came out over Sunday, her husband had no
friends in New York. Rivington and the Holt family (incongruous mixture)
formed the sum total of her acquaintance.
On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge
signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other
necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.
Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier
stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was
sure she should like if only she knew them. Once the sight of her school
friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of
recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face
with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.
Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled
sensations, the procession there. The colour, the movement, the sensation
of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy, was at once
a stimulation and a despair. Brougham after brougham passed, victoria
after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly or sat
back, impassive, amidst the cushions. Some of them, indeed, looked bored,
but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and prosperity. Even
the people--well-dressed, too--in the hansom cabs were usually animated
and smiling. On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned girls passed her,
sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and three, going in and
out of the expensive-looking shops with the large, plate-glass windows.
All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere
to go, some one to meet the very next, minute. They protested to
milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed
impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them. But Honora had
no imperative appointments. Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or
going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one
in New York.
"I'm so sorry, my dear," she would say, and add reproachfully: "why
didn't you telephone me you were coming? If you had only let me know we
might have lunched together or gone to the matinee. Now I have promised
Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house."
Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite
of one's self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned. But if
indeed Honora telephoned--as she did once or twice in her innocence--Lily
was quite as distressed.
"My dear, why didn't you let me know last night? Trixy Brent has given
Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never
forgive me if I backed out."
Although she lived in an apartment--in a most attractive one, to be sure
--there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable. She
had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous. She could have made
her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she bought
everything from "little" men and women whom she discovered herself. It
was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople eventually became
fashionable, too. Lily was kind to Honora, and gave her their addresses
before they grew to be great and insolent and careless whether one
patronized them or not.
While we are confessing the trials and weaknesses of our heroine, we
shall have to admit that she read, occasionally, the society columns of
the newspapers. And in this manner she grew to have a certain familiarity
with the doings of those favourites of fortune who had more delightful
engagements than hours in which to fulfil them. So intimate was Lily
Dallam with many of these Olympians that she spoke of them by their first
names, or generally by their nicknames. Some two years after Honora's
marriage the Dallams had taken a house in that much discussed colony of
Quicksands, where sport and pleasure reigned supreme: and more than once
the gown which Mrs. Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had been
faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she had
given at the Quicksands Club. One of these dinners, Honora learned, had
been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent.
"You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy
about you."
Time passed, however, and Mrs. Dallam made no attempt to bring about this
most desirable meeting. When Honora and Howard went to town to dine with
the Dallams, it was always at a restaurant, a 'partie carree'. Lily
Dallam thought it dull to dine at home, and they went to the theatre
afterwards--invariably a musical comedy. Although Honora did not care
particularly for musical comedies, she always experienced a certain
feverish stimulation which kept her wide awake on the midnight train to
Rivington. Howard had a most exasperating habit of dozing in the corner
of the seat.
"You are always sleepy when I have anything interesting to talk to you
about," said Honora, "or reading stock reports. I scarcely see anything
at all of you."
Howard roused himself.
"Where are we now?" he asked.
"Oh," cried Honora, "we haven't passed Hydeville. Howard, who is Trixton
Brent?"
"What about him?" demanded her husband.
"Nothing--except that he is one of Lily's friends, and she said she knew
--I should like him. I wish you would be more interested in people. Who
is he?"
"One of the best-known operators in the market," Howard answered, and his
air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed;
"a daring gambler. He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million.
He's a sport, too."
"How old is he?"
"About forty-three."
"Is he married?" inquired Honora.
"He's divorced," said Howard. And she had to be content with so much of
the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence
again. A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume,
in one of the magazines. She thought him good-looking, and wondered what
kind of a wife he had had.
Honora, when she went to town for the day, generally could be sure of
finding some one, at least, of the Holt family at home at luncheon time.
They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary
and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's
arrival in her own country. It had a wide, brownstone front, with a
basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door. Within,
solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the
prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork. On
the second floor, the library where the family assembled was more
cheerful. The books themselves, although in black-walnut cases, and the
sun pouring in, assisted in making this effect.
Here, indeed, were stability and peace. Here Honora remade the
acquaintance of the young settlement worker, and of the missionary, now
on the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Here she charmed other friends and
allies of the Holt family; and once met, somewhat to her surprise, two
young married women who differed radically from the other guests of the
house. Honora admired their gowns if not their manners; for they ignored
her, and talked to Mrs. Holt about plans for raising money for the
Working Girl's Relief Society.
"You should join us, my dear," said Mrs. Holt; "I am sure you would be
interested in our work."
"I'd be so glad to, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, "if only I didn't live in
the country."
She came away as usual, feeling of having run into a cul de sac. Mrs.
Holt's house was a refuge, not an outlet; and thither Honora directed her
steps when a distaste for lunching alone or with some of her Rivington
friends in the hateful, selfish gayety of a fashionable restaurant
overcame her; or when her moods had run through a cycle, and an
atmosphere of religion and domesticity became congenial.
"Howard," she asked unexpectedly one evening, as he sat smoking beside
the blue tiled mantel, "have you got on your winter flannels?"
"I'll bet a hundred dollars to ten cents," he cried, "that you've been
lunching with Mrs. Holt."
"I think you're horrid," said Honora.
Something must be said for her. Domestic virtue, in the face of such
mocking heresy, is exceptionally difficult of attainment.
Mrs. Holt had not been satisfied with Honora's and Susan's accounts of
the house in Stafford Park. She felt called upon to inspect it. And for
this purpose, in the spring following Honora's marriage, she made a
pilgrimage to Rivington and spent the day. Honora met her at the station,
and the drive homeward was occupied in answering innumerable questions on
the characters, conditions, and modes of life of Honora's neighbours.