Book: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3
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Winston Churchill >> A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3
"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, when they were seated before the fire
after lunch, "I want you to feel that you can come to me for everything.
I must congratulate you and Howard on being sensible enough to start your
married life simply, in the country. I shall never forget the little
house in which Mr. Holt and I began, and how blissfully happy I was." The
good lady reached out and took Honora's hand in her own. "Not that your
deep feeling for your husband will ever change. But men are more
difficult to manage as they grow older, my dear, and the best of them
require a little managing for their own good. And increased
establishments bring added cares and responsibilities. Now that I am
here, I have formed a very fair notion of what it ought to cost you to
live in such a place. And I shall be glad to go over your housekeeping
books with you, and tell you if you are being cheated as I dare say you
are."
"Oh, Mrs. Holt," Honora faltered, "I--I haven't kept any books. Howard
just pays the bills."
"You mean to say he hasn't given you any allowance!" cried Mrs. Holt,
aghast. "You don't know what it costs to run this house?"
"No," said Honora, humbly. "I never thought of it. I have no idea what
Howard's income may be."
"I'll write to Howard myself--to-night," declared Mrs. Holt.
"Please don't, Mrs. Holt. I'll--I'll speak to him," said Honora.
"Very well, then," the good lady agreed, "and I will send you one of my
own books, with my own system, as soon as I get home. It is not your
fault, my dear, it is Howard's. It is little short of criminal of him. I
suppose this is one of the pernicious results of being on the Stock
Exchange. New York is nothing like what it was when I was a girl--the
extravagance by everybody is actually appalling. The whole city is bent
upon lavishness and pleasure. And I am afraid it is very often the wives,
Honora, who take the lead in prodigality. It all tends, my dear, to
loosen the marriage tie--especially this frightful habit of dining in
hotels and restaurants."
Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to
bottom, from laundry to linen closet. Suffice it to say that the
inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed
over.
"It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear," was her final
comment. "But you are wise in providing for the future."
"For the future?" Honora repeated.
Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.
"When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will--soon," she said,
smiling at Honora's colour. "Sometimes it all comes back to me--my own
joy when Joshua was a baby. I was very foolish about him, no doubt. Annie
and Gwendolen tell me so. I wouldn't even let the nurse sit up with him
when he was getting his teeth. Mercy!" she exclaimed, glancing at the
enamelled watch on her gown,--for long practice had enabled her to tell
the time upside down,--"we'll be late for the train, my dear."
After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her
window, looking out on the park. The afternoon sunlight had the silvery
tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway
was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a
vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines;
and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped
along the strip of sidewalk.
Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had
spoken? It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking
in her. Children! A home! Why was it that she did not want children? Why
should such a natural longing be absent in her? Her mind went back to the
days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large
families. She had always associated marriage with children--until she got
married. And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the
matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of
it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to
her, it was faint and shadowy indeed? Why were not her spirit and her
hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?
The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora
did not mention it to her husband. Circumstances were her excuse: he had
had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked
disinclination for the discussion of household matters. It was not until
the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between
them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually
uncommunicative and morose. Just as electrical disturbances are said to
be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain
glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were
synchronous with a depression in the market.
"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening.
"The bills are pretty stiff this month. You don't seem to have any idea
of the value of money."
"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can
you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"
"Save me so much!" he echoed.
"Yes. If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me two
hundred dollars. I took such pains--all on your account--to find a little
man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one hundred and
twenty-five."
It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed
by this argument.
"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a
receiver by Christmas. I can't see any difference between buying one suit
from Ridley--whoever he may be--and three from Lily Dallam's 'little
man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."
"Oh, I didn't get three!--I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.
Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"
"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.
"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried
reproachfully.
"To please me!"
"Who else? We-we don't know anybody in New York. And I wanted you to be
proud of me. I've tried so hard and--and sometimes you don't even look at
my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."
This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with
a hint of tears in Honora's voice. Its effect upon Howard was peculiar
--he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened. He put down his
cigarette--and Honora was on his knee! He could not deny her attractions.
"How could you be so cruel, Howard?" she asked.
"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern. It was my own idea to
save money--I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt. And
you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner
with these Rivington people. You always have champagne. If--if you're
poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
dinner gown."
"You've ordered another dinner gown!"
"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're
poor--"
She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
touch a sensitive nerve.
"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market,
and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for
awhile, Honora."
It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
visits to St. Louis.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW DOCTRINE
This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented
with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast
finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark
well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess,
not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize
a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is
not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French,
clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are
neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is
a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is
worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette,
and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she
were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they
understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not
to bring peace, but a sword.
At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his
dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.
"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're
getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face.
"For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't
mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much worse.
You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another
husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they
have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm
sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the
fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly
idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs
--of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve
afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled
with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling,
illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and
self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such
a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned,
she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he
had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the
possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he
admitted.
"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If
I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat
and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have
married you--never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I
was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated
that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a
little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a
hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which
had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an
amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her
of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take
it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"
"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be
much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no
end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to
amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know
enough to keep thin."
He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.
"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but
you never broke loose this way before."
"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone.
I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you
over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any
possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get
married again."
"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
breath.
"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting
when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good
deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the
women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears
--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the
making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
Her husband got up.
"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly
dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of
determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.
There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a
charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.
He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught
her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll
have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her
head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's--it's an
ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily
Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry
me in a minute."
He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think
you've got to have one."
"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be
done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white
panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got
for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors
give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two
criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely
turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph frame or
a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous,
old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie
Farwell could have made anything out of it."
"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell?
Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if
he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this
afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't.
She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the
Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some day."
"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a
feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
Honora sprang to her feet.
"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for
dinner-and you'll never be ready."
"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.
Let's talk it over a little more--"
"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my
ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."
"For my own good!"
"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and
obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married me,"
she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing
and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save
you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared
into her room and closed the door.
We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other
people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the
week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the
subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot
like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man
was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured
under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had
been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether he had
ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the
troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we
may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had
been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had
contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that
ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask
himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at
Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which
had as yet eluded him. And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more
crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the
realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.
Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he
insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might
some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would
do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.
We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental
processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of
his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With
instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a
day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily
had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of
unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much
to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting
headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the
evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's
front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the
spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously
from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement
kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across
the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the
tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and
driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And
out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.
"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just
couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my
staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady
Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's
arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout?
Isn't he a darling?"
"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.
Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding
him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."
"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for
him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with
me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to
dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea
how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so
we've got just ourselves."
Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad,
when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a
song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could
do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?"
she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I
meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature
boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked
superciliously down from the walls.
"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a
success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about
you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little
Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure
I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora.
And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as
beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid
says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is
wonderful. How do you like this dress?"
"All your things are exquisite."
"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.
Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself. Only the hypercritical, when
Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle. She
was the most finished of finished products. Her complexion was high and
(be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal
the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the
world. It was impossible not to love her.
"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table,
"how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like
Rivington all these years! I think she's an angel to have stood it. Men
are beyond me. Do you know what an attractive wife you've got? I've just
been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared with
her, and the men were crazy about her."
"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished
his first glass of champagne.
"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take
a house at Quicksands? You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a
bathing suit. Why don't you come down?"
"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.
"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that
gentleman admitted with gravity. "But I haven't decided anything. There
are certain drawbacks--"
"Drawbacks!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "Drawbacks at Quicksands! I'd like to
know what they are. Don't be silly, Howard. You get more for your money
there than any place I know." Suddenly the light of an inspiration came
into her eyes, and she turned to her husband. "Sid, the Alfred Fern house
is for rent, isn't it?"
"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.
"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam. "What an
imbecile I was not to think of it! It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes
from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it
last fall. It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard. They
couldn't have failed more opportunely. I'm sorry for Alfred, but I always
thought Louise Fern a little snob. Sid, you must see Alfred down town the
first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll rent it
for. Tell him I wish to know."
"But--my dear Lily--began Mr. Dallam apologetically.