Part 1

The Stories of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding in Munsey’s Magazine 1920-1928

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

DECEMBER, 1921 Vol. LXXIV NUMBER 3

The Married Man

A MODERN COMEDY OF ENLIGHTENED THOUGHT

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Author of “Angelica”

She had got used to Andrew’s forgetting all sorts of important anniversaries. In fact, she rather liked him to do so. It gave her something to forgive, and fed her measureless indulgence. All his eccentricities, his absurdities, his brilliant and explosive energy, his terrible exactions, constituted “Andy’s ways,” which she loved with a deep and pitying love.

Even if he was clever and successful and attractive, he couldn’t do the things she could do so easily and so well. He couldn’t darn his own socks or cook a dinner or make a bed. She insisted that he was helpless--that all men were helpless. She was the sort of woman who would have pitied Julius Cæsar because he couldn’t make an omelet.

Something of this kindly indulgence was reflected upon her nice face as she sat in the library sewing and waiting for Andrew. She was a handsome, dignified, good-tempered woman of thirty-five, who was never to be taken by surprise. No matter what might happen, she would raise her eyebrows and smile and say, “Well?”--which was her nice, kind way of saying, “I told you so!”

And generally she had told you so, because, like so many other unimaginative people, she could almost always foresee ordinary consequences. Her prognostications were based, not upon probabilities, but upon experience.

It was the tenth anniversary of their wedding--an important day in a household. And yet, knowing Andrew as she did, Marian had made no preparations for festivity, because he was as likely as not to forget or to neglect even a special dinner. She would remind him when he came in, and smile at him, and he would be startled and contrite. She would not acknowledge the little wound that was there, even to herself.

Nor would she acknowledge what she really knew quite well--that Andy wasn’t happy, as she was. Hadn’t she provided him with all the materials for happiness--a lovely, peaceful home, three pretty, healthy children, and just the social background he required?

What is more, she knew that no just man could find a fault in her as a wife. She was thrifty, conscientious, sympathetic, a correct and popular hostess, an excellent mother. She was never irritable, never gloomy, never exacting. She was handsome, and understood how to dress. There was really nothing within the domestic cosmos to which a sane man could object.

That may have been the trouble. Andrew was a man who did not approve of happiness. He wanted and required to be forever struggling and rebelling and resenting. Marian had often, with amusement, noticed him trying to provoke a quarrel with her; but of course he never could, for she never quarreled.

The clock struck eleven. She sighed a little, laid down her sewing, and picked up a book. It had been a very trying day. Andrew had vanished, without the least regard for appointments he himself had made, or office hours, and she had had to placate all sorts of people without knowing at all the cause of his delinquency. It was simply another of “Andy’s ways,” and a very troublesome one in a doctor.

She recognized it as part of a wife’s duties to smooth the path of her husband--above all, of a husband who was the next thing to a genius. She was accustomed to hearing him spoken of as “brilliant.” She was proud of it, and secretly a little proud of his eccentricities. He was an extraordinary man, no doubt about it, and he required a wife of extraordinary tact.

He was a physician, but not satisfied with that. He liked to write articles and give lectures, and he had a reputation as a very daring if not very sound investigator along sociological lines. He had proclaimed and printed office hours; but if he were busy writing, he wouldn’t see any one who came, and it was Marian, of course, who did have to see these people and get them away not too grossly offended.

At other times there would be some patient who interested him, and he would shut himself up with him or her; and again in this case Marian had to soothe and placate the other patients who had seen the favored one admitted, and who naturally resented being kept waiting so outrageously. There was not a trace of jealousy, or of curiosity, in Marian. She smiled at his interest in a pretty woman.

She wasn’t too much interested in anything--certainly not in the book she had taken up, for she put it down again with a yawn within a very few minutes, to look at the clock and to give a small sigh. She couldn’t help wishing that Andrew had remembered what day it was, at least to the extent of an extra kiss. Even the most able and placid woman might wish that.

Then, at last, he did come in, in a mood she knew well; and her faint hope that perhaps he had remembered, and would bring her flowers, fell stone dead. He flung himself into a chair, hot and tired and rather pale, with his red hair ruffled up, giving him the look of a sulky and earnest child.

“Well!” said Marian, with a nice smile. “Here you are! Such a day as I’ve had, Andy! People telephoning and insisting that they had appointments and refusing to be put off; and poor me without the least idea where you were or when you’d come back! There was that poor woman with the albino twins--”

He frowned impatiently.

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t want the case, anyway. No! See here, Marian. I want to talk to you.”

She said “Yes?” inquiringly, with her kind and pleasant face turned toward him, but he didn’t look at her. He sat staring at the ground, huddled down in his chair, rumpled, disheveled.

“What is there about him so attractive?” Marian reflected, not for the first time.

He was not handsome, he was very untidy, he was casual, rude, distrait; a slender, wiry red-haired fellow of thirty-five, with a sharp-featured, rather pale, freckled face and restless, bright brown eyes.

At last he looked up at his wife, still frowning.

“Don’t be hurt!” he said “And _try_ to understand!”

“Of course I will, Andy.”

“I’ve been walking,” he went on, “for hours--almost all day--thinking it out. This lecture that I’m to give, you know, to-morrow--”

“Oh, yes--before the Moral Courage Club.”

“I’d made fairly comprehensive notes of what I was going to say; but it’s been growing on me, every day, how weak and cowardly it is--how evasive. I hadn’t _dared_ to be frank, I never have dared. I’ve compromised. I’ve lied. I’ve kept it up for ten years--ten years to-day, Marian!”

“Kept up what?” she asked, startled.

“This damnable hypocrisy!” he cried. “This wretched, revolting pretense! Do you know that it’s the anniversary to-night of that horrible ceremony--that perjury--that mockery we called our marriage?”

Marian had grown quite white.

“Why, Andy!” she faltered. “I never thought--I thought--I always hoped you were--happy!”

He sprang up and began to pace the room.

“I can’t _stand_ it any longer!” he cried. “I’m at the end of my tether. Oh, this _marriage_!”

“Is it--me, Andy?” Marian asked rather pitifully.

“No! No! It’s simply marriage--marriage with any one. It’s this base, disgusting monotony, this abominable pettiness, this eternal talk about servants and children and coal-bills and neighbors and card-parties. It stifles me. It sickens me. I can’t _live_ any more unless I’m free!”

“Do you mean that you--want a divorce, Andy?” she asked, with a gallant effort to disguise her terror and distress.

“No,” he answered, “not necessarily. I shouldn’t like to lose you altogether, Marian--unless, of course, you’d like to form another connection. Would you?”

“No--no, Andy, I wouldn’t!”

“I didn’t think so. What I want, Marian, is simply to ignore our marriage. I want to be released from its petty restrictions and obligations. Will you do that, Marian? Will you absolve me from all these preposterous ‘vows,’ and so on?”

“Yes,” she answered promptly. “I will--if you like.”

“And you won’t be hurt? You won’t be petty? You won’t think I’m not fond of you, Marian?”

She shook her head.

“You see, don’t you, that we can be just as fond of each other, and yet go our separate ways?”

“Are we--does that mean--that we’re to--part?” she asked.

He came over and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“My dear girl,” he said, “I can’t live with you any longer.”

She couldn’t restrain a sob.

“Oh, Andy! Oh! Is there--some one else?”

“No! Can’t you _see_? I want to be alone--to live alone--in freedom. I’ll take a house for myself somewhere, and you’ll go on here, just as usual; except that I’d like to have the children part of the time. I won’t be unreasonable, though.”

“I don’t think I’d--like to--go on here, without you,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’d be--lonely.”

“Nonsense! Not after a day or so. You’d enjoy the freedom, too. I’ve got my eye on a little house that will suit me very well. And really, Marian, I’d very much prefer you and the children keeping on here in the same way. Of course, I should make you the same housekeeping allowance, and so on.”

“I would like a little freedom, too,” she said. “I--can’t stop here--without you, Andrew.”

“Well, of course,” he answered, rather disconcerted, “I’ve no right to dictate to you.”

“You can stay here,” she said, “with the children, and I’ll go and stop with mother for a few days, where I can think it over quietly. Then I’ll send for the babies. I--you see, I want to--get used to this. It’s--rather sudden.”

It was no longer possible to conceal the fact that she was weeping. Her husband was really distressed. He patted her lovely, shining hair with a careless hand, while he scowled anxiously before him.

“My dear girl! Please! This isn’t a tragedy, by any means. Simply let’s be two sensible, modern people who refuse to be bound by certain conventions. Do be your own sensible self, won’t you?”

“I--will--try!” she sobbed. “Only--you’ll have to give me--a little time.”

He looked at the clock; it was a little after midnight.

“Perhaps I’d better leave you alone,” he said. “I’ll be going now.”

“Going? Where? At this hour?”

“Well, you see--that lecture to-morrow. It’s to be ‘Marriage from the Man’s Point of View.’ I can’t, with any dignity, any decency, say what I wish to say--be really honest--in the character of a domestic man. It would be a farce. I must be able to say that I’m a free man, do you see?”

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But--does that mean it’s got to begin now?”

“What?”

“The--living apart?”

“I’m afraid so. I thought I’d go to a hotel for the night, and send after my things in the morning.”

“Oh, no, Andy, please! I couldn’t explain--to the servants. No! That’s the only thing I ask you. Let me be the one to go. You can say it’s a telegram from mother.”

“Nonsense, my dear girl! I won’t hear of it! Turning you out of the house at this hour of the night! Let _me_ go!”

“No, Andrew, I’d rather; really I would! I’d _like_ to go. I--need a change. If you’ll call a taxi while I pack my bag--”

“You’re quite sure?” he asked anxiously, and again she assured him that she really wished to go.

She went up to the big, lamp-lit bedroom, so immaculate, so charming, with its two brass beds, the dressing-table and bureau gleaming with silver, the soft gray rug on the floor, her dear little sewing-table, all the photographs--

“Oh, _why_?” she cried. “Oh, why do I have to leave it?”

She went about in her brisk, sensible way, selecting things out of one drawer and another and packing them neatly into a bag; but long before she had finished a sudden spasm of pain overcame her. She sat down in her own particular wicker chair, and sobbed bitterly.

“I _don’t_ understand!” she cried. “I _don’t_! I _don’t_! Not a bit!”

II

She was her usual calm self when she came down-stairs again, and was able to give her husband a great many directions and suggestions as they rode to the station.

“I’ll send a night letter to Miss Franklin to come and take care of the children till I send for them,” she said. “I happen to know that she’s free now. She’s such a capable girl! You’ll have nothing to worry about with her in the house.”

Anxiously, but timidly, afraid that it was a reactionary and contemptible insistence, but resolute to save herself in the eyes of her world, contemptible or not, she added:

“And you’ll be sure to say that I got a telegram from mother, won’t you, Andrew?”

She kissed him good-by kindly, pleasantly, and succeeded in getting into the train with her nice smile still on her lips. Andrew was reassured, and went home to spend what was left of the night in completing his lecture notes.

He fell asleep toward morning on the sofa in his office. He would no doubt have slept peacefully on till noon, as he had often done before, if it hadn’t been for an unusual noise in the dining-room at breakfast-time. He was a little indignant, for he had never been disturbed before, and he was curious, too. His children--even the four-year-old Frank--were singing lustily, in unison, a jubilant sort of chant, led by a very fresh, clear, loud young female voice.

“Hail! Hail!” they shouted.

All ruffled and rumpled as he was, he entered the room, to find a strange spectacle. His three children were standing on the window-seat, with arms outspread and face upturned. Behind them stood a young woman in the same yearning attitude, while they all cried their invocation:

“To the glorious sun that gives us life, all hail!”

That must have been the end of it, for the children got down and made a rush at him.

“Oh, daddy! Mother’s gone to grandma’s!” the eldest little girl told him eagerly. “Miss Franklin’s going to take care of us. _I’m_ going to write to mother every single day, but not Jean and Frank. _They_ only scribble. She couldn’t _possibly_ read it!”

He was not attending. He was looking at the young woman who stood beside him, smiling. She was a short, sturdy blonde with a very pretty and impudent face, a wide, jolly mouth, and queer gray eyes, which were at the same time immensely candid and quite mysterious.

“I’m Christine Franklin,” said she. “I’m the originator of the Franklin method of child care. I dare say you’ve heard of me. Your wife sent me a night letter to come and take charge of your little family for a time. That’s what I do, you know--go from house to house, and liberate.”

“Liberate?”

“That’s how I put it. I always insist that there shall be no interference from parents or relatives or servants. Then I begin to set the children free--to let them express themselves--to be natural.”

“I see!” said Andrew. “Is breakfast over?”

It was not, and after a brief toilet he sat down to enjoy it with his family. He felt that he rather liked Miss Franklin.

“Nothing clinging and hyperfeminine about her!” he thought. “A man could make a friend of a girl like that.”

He decided to study her. Now that he was free and couldn’t be misunderstood, he had decided to make a comprehensive study of woman in general. He knew that there were points about them that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t really generalize upon the effects of marriage without a better knowledge of females--he admitted that. Why not, he asked himself, begin with this interesting specimen?

“What is the Franklin method?” he asked her.

“It’s not really a method at all,” she said. “It would be better to call it a theory. It’s simply nature and art, hand in hand. I don’t believe in directing or controlling a child. I simply help it along the road it indicates itself. My mission is solely to point out beauty to it.”

“That’s likely to make it very much more difficult for them to become accustomed to discipline and self-restraint when they’re old enough to be held responsible.”

“But, you see, I don’t believe either in discipline or self-restraint, in children or in adults. The natural impulses are sufficient. No, Dr. Nature implants in us only right and beautiful desires. I look upon self-restraint as superfluous, if not absolutely wrong, in a wholesome person.”

“Social interdependence requires--” Andrew began.

“We _shouldn’t_ interdepend. We should each be a law unto himself. Let us be healthy, in mind and in body; then let desire be the sole rule, the sole conscience. Personally, I know that if I want to do a thing, it is right to do it. If I want to have a thing, it is a right thing for me to have.”

Andrew contested that, but she merely smiled at his arguments.

“Well!” she said. “As for _me_, when I want something, I go after it--and I generally get it.”

Andrew met her clear, shameless glance, and an unaccountable shudder ran through him. What a girl! What an enemy she would make--or what a pursuer!

She was undoubtedly an interesting and convenient subject for his new study, but he didn’t study her. On the contrary, he avoided her. He shut himself up in his study and tried to write, but the new freedom for his children entailed such a distressing amount of noise and quarreling that he accomplished very little.

He wished to write a long and careful letter to Marian. He was afraid that she hadn’t fully understood, that she was a little hurt, in spite of what she had said; but he found it a remarkably difficult thing to explain to a woman that you are very fond of her and yet wish to be rid of her. He was not the first man who has essayed such a task.

The noise in the dining-room became intolerable. He tore up his third attempt at a letter and went in there, in a very bad temper.

“Why the devil do you stay in here?” he shouted to his young family. “Why aren’t you out in the garden, or at school, or wherever it is your mother sends you? Don’t you know that I’m trying to work?”

Miss Franklin had entered from the kitchen, eating a slice of bread and sugar.

“Ask the cook for some!” she suggested, and the children vanished. “What are you writing?” she inquired frankly.

He didn’t care to mention the letter, so he said:

“My lecture. I’m giving one this afternoon, you know.”

“What on?”

“‘Marriage from the Man’s Point of View.’”

She pricked up her ears.

“What is a man’s point of view?” she asked.

“For a man,” he said, “marriage is moral death. It is slavery--bondage of the worst sort. It is a handicap which prevents any effective progress. It is, of course, an invention of woman’s, to safeguard herself and her offspring. She has found it necessary to provide herself with a refuge, and she has ruthlessly taken advantage of her sinister influence over the more sensitive and conscientious man to impress him with a mass of false and pernicious ideas about the ‘home.’ Man has not one single advantage to gain from marriage, yet he has actually been taught, by mothers, by women teachers, by all the females who surround young children, to think of it as a privilege. He secures a home. What is a home? A nest for the woman, a cage for the man. What is a wife? The most unprincipled, exacting slave-driver ever yet developed. For her and her children he is required to give all the fruit of has labor, and, in addition, a fantastic and debasing reverence and flattery--”

“You poor thing!” said Miss Franklin.

He stopped short, in surprise.

“Why?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“You must have been so wretched with your wife,” said she.

His face turned crimson.

“I wasn’t,” he said, with an immense effort at self-control. “Quite the contrary. One doesn’t apply general remarks to--specific cases.”

“Oh, yes, one does indeed!” Miss Franklin insisted.

III

He went off quite in the wrong frame of mind to deliver his lecture. When he had taken a stealthy peep at his audience, he became actually nervous. The Moral Courage Club seemed to be made up almost entirely of women--rows and rows of earnest faces. It would be very unpleasant to wound and distress them, as his words were sure to do, especially as they had all contributed toward the fee he was to receive. For a minute he was almost tempted to soften some of his remarks, but his reformer’s ardor flamed up again, and he went out upon the platform bravely.

The sight of their feathers and furs and earrings helped him. After all, they were nothing but barbarians, who must be enlightened at any cost. He began. He told than, as kindly as possible, how selfish, how greedy, how uncivilized they were, how unpleasant they looked in their skins of dead animals and feathers of dead birds, with all their savage and unesthetic finery; how brutally they preyed upon man.

“Marriage ruins a man,” he said. “It stifles his ambitions; it coarsens him, it debases him. It outrages his manly self-respect. He is debarred from wholesome and essential experiences. He is shamefully exploited. He is forced into hypocrisy and deceit. Partly from his native kindliness, partly from his woman-directed training, he never dares to tell the truth to the opposite sex.”

And so on, directly into those earnest faces, framed by all their barbaric plumes and furs and jewels. To his surprise and dismay, none of them changed, grew abashed or angry or stern. They were only _interested_, all of them.

They came up in a body when he had finished, and congratulated him.

“You are always so stimulating!” said one.

“You brush aside the non-essentials!” said another.

“It gives one a new outlook!”

“I hope to see it in print. It is so suggestive, dear doctor!”

Only one of the earnest horde made any sort of individual impression, and that was a slender, dark, elegant woman who approached him after every one else had gone.

“Doctor!” she said in a low, thrilling voice. “I feel that I _must_ speak to you. Let me take you home in my car, won’t you?”

She was interesting, distinguished, and, he fancied, intelligent; so he was quite willing to follow her to her waiting motor-car and to seat himself beside her.

“Your lecture,” she began. “It’s such a startling idea to me--that of man being the victim in marriage.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not the conventional, romantic idea, of course.”

“Nor the true one,” she cried. “Oh, doctor, your brain may be right, but your heart is wrong! There is so much that you don’t seem to know--to understand! You don’t seem to realize how hideously we suffer--what _we_ endure. I cannot pretend to be impersonal. I want to tell you the truth--a side of it that you don’t know. I want to tell you of one case. Then you must tell me what you think.”

She laid her hand on his arm and looked earnestly into his face.

“I want you to hear my story, and then tell me frankly whether or not _my_ husband was a victim!”