CHAPTER XVIII

Dick Harrison was R. G. Harrison in the Second National Bank Building. R. G. Harrison was increasingly important. He had started at twenty-five, looking after his dead father’s interests and fortune. At thirty-six he had taken his place among the young business men of the city who had made good and could contribute not only money, but also brains to the public benefit. He had been involved in various enterprises, all of them successful, but more and more he had withdrawn and concentrated lately on the mines in which Matthew Allenby and his company were interested. Dick and Matthew were constantly increasing their holdings, playing it together. Dick was director of the bank housed in the building where he had his office, and director of half a dozen companies; but his main interest was in the Lebanon Range mines.

If Cecily felt that Dick only half knew the difficulties she had in her house, it did not occur to Dick to counter that she knew little of the press of things that weighed on him through his business day--interests, worries, decisions, definite things. Little wonder that the intangible “something” which troubled Cecily could not impress him as serious. Serious things were the next tax on the mines, the threatened difficulties with labor agitators, the money tightness in the country. The business of the world, the business that kept food in people’s mouths, provided homes and motors and jewels and luxuries--that was real. He was becoming a little prone to dismiss Cecily’s tendencies to be easily “hurt,” to object to his desire for amusement of one kind and another, on the general premise that “women are queer.”

So he said to Matthew as they sat in his office one day after disposing of a host of details.

“Women are queer.”

“Original, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’m just beginning to find out that it’s true.”

“That remark,” commented Matthew, “always seemed to me not to be far from the vaudeville stuff about women--husband and wife fight stuff. It’s cheap cant. Women queer! Every one’s queer!”

“So, why pick on women, eh?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’ll tell you why. With a man you know where you are. You size him up and you know how to deal with him. With women you can size up again and again; you think you’ve got it and then you find that just the thing you’ve done to please them is the thing that doesn’t please them.”

“More and more like George Cohan. Why have you such a sudden discouraged interest in women, Dick?”

“I haven’t an interest in women. I was just thinking that I’d like to know how to make things a bit easier for Cecily.”

He sounded quite serious and anxious for confidence. Matthew dropped his air of banter and stood at the window staring down over the miles of commercial roofs below him. It was immensely difficult for them both to go on and yet they both wanted to. Matthew began at the beginning.

“Are things hard for Cecily?”

Dick looked at him squarely. “I rather thought you guessed she was a bit blue when you took her away from the dance that night during Christmas week.”

“I thought she was tired out, if that’s what you’re driving at. I should think you’d expect that. A woman who has three children----”

“For God’s sake, don’t begin that. I can’t have them myself, can I? And it isn’t just babies and servants.”

“No, but you have to understand that the strain----”

“I know all about that. I haven’t had it off my mind for three years. I am trying to get it off Cecily’s mind. That’s the reason I think she ought to get about a bit--judging from the way I feel myself.”

“That’s it, Dick.”

“What’s it?”

“Judging from the way you feel yourself, you think Cecily ought to want the things you want. Instead, she wants something else.”

“I wish I knew what it was. I’d do anything on God’s earth if I could find out what it is.”

“She wants what you can’t give her, I think.”

A glimmer of proprietary jealousy came into Dick’s eyes. “How in hell do you know so much about it?”

“Now, look here, Dick; you began this conversation, you know----”

“I know I did. And I want to go on with it. What is it Cecily wants that she hasn’t got and that I can’t give her?”

Matthew looked a little nonplussed and embarrassed.

“This is a fool of a conversation.”

“But I want to know.”

“Well, I should say that Cecily wants love.”

“What!” cried Dick, getting up. “Who?”

“Oh, as far as that goes, you; unfortunately, you alone.”

“And you have the damned nerve to say I can’t give her that.”

Matthew seemed imperturbable. “Not her kind.”

“Maybe you think that you could.”

“Don’t be so primitive, Dick. I don’t think any such rotten thing. If you will chain your spirited desires to do murder for a moment I’ll finish what I was about to say--what you urged me to say after having dragged me into this conversation. I think that Cecily is so attuned to delicacy and to fine things--so in love with her love of you--that any suggestion of coarseness or let down, any slight deterioration of quality in feeling, any fear that you are becoming cheapened by the wrong kind of people or the wrong kind of amusement (and most of the amusement she sees is tawdry in her eyes), hurts her--more than hurts her.”

“It’s very highbrow,” said Dick, “but I suppose you mean she wants a perpetual honeymoon.”

Matthew threw up his hands. “There you go--vaudeville stuff again.”

Dick flushed angrily. “Well, I’ll be damned if I think you’ve said one definite tangible thing--one thing a man can tie to.”

“I didn’t mean to. Cecily’s troubles are quite mental--quite intangible--partly the result of an education which is totally out of accord with the times. It leaves women too sensitive for these days. Fliss’s High School was better for her.”

“So you think I can’t appreciate my wife.”

“There are precious few people who can appreciate Cecily.”

“And what do you advise me to do about it?”

“Why, I don’t know that there’s much to be done. You might try to please her in little things; give up the things that seem silly to her--dancing with a lot of silly idiots----”

Dick let his fists drop on his desk with a kind of angry decision.

“That’s what it gets down to, after all, isn’t it? Because Cecily doesn’t care for a certain kind of thing I am to give it up absolutely; without any assurance that I’ll get anywhere if I do. And what happens to me? You say I can’t play up to Cecily anyway. Am I to sit at home and twirl my thumbs and be sighed over?”

“You’re becoming absurd.”

“I’m not absurd. I’m working hard. You know I’m working hard and I’ve got to have a little fun. I’m going to be old in five years. I’ve only a few years of even the end of youth left. Isn’t the absurd thing that Cecily and I can’t enjoy things together? But I catch myself wondering all the time if she isn’t disapproving, if she doesn’t think I’m coarse. I get so tired of playing up to her instead of being easy and natural.”

“And the coarse streak in you aches for a bit of ribaldry.”

Dick smiled sheepishly. “Perhaps.”

The twilight had fallen now. Matthew, pacing by the window again, looked down on the streets, dark and soft through a sudden fall of snow. He turned and laid his hand on Dick’s shoulder.

“Well, anyway, life’s a queer mess,” he said.

Dick looked at him curiously, somewhat abashed at this personal, tangled conversation.

“We’re a pair of nuts,” he said, “and I’ll be late to dinner, and there’s a new cook.”

They took their hats.

“They’re still talking of you for the Senate, Matthew.”

“It’s rot. I’ve never had a political office outside of Carrington.”

“Lots of people like that idea, and of course the reason the old birds who’ve been in at the game have their eye on you is because you’ve got a strangle hold on so many votes. You’re a greater hero around here than Pershing since all that draft board and home guard stuff.”

“Heavy military service, that was.”

“Heavy military acquaintance. General acquaintance and a clean name. They’ll get you yet.”

“We’ll see,” answered Matthew. “Maybe some day I would like to have an inside glimpse of Washington, but not for a while yet, even if I could get in, which is very unlikely. About that man Martin at the Everett mine----”

They clamped their thoughts to that man Martin with some relief. In Matthew’s car, as they slid and skidded along through the streets, “It seems such rot--this fuss about moods--when there are people around here by the thousands with actual troubles, hunger, cold and sickness.” That was Dick. It expressed his feeling for reality.

“Some people live by moods--by the spirit,” answered Matthew.

Matthew went home. Fliss was dining out and had expressly excluded him from the party, characterizing it as a “bunch that would bore you to death. Eat at the club and I’ll let the maids go out. Come and pick me up if you like. I’ll say you’re working.” So Matthew went through the silent house, so perfectly in order, so dimly lit, up to the third floor. In his own rooms a sense of ease and security seemed to envelop him. He lit the small fire that was always laid in readiness for him and settled himself before it comfortably with his pipe. He had forgotten or refused to consider dinner. The room became very quiet, the crackle of the fire only bringing out the stillness and mystery of thought.

He had been there a couple of hours when there was a knock on the door, and before he could rise to open it, his wife pushed it open and stood on the threshold, her golden evening cloak wrapped around her, a few snowflakes clinging to her uncovered hair.

“Where did you drop from? I was going to come for you later.”

“I left after dinner, and, finding you were home, I took liberties with your solitude. Can I sit down in the holy place?”

Her gayety did not ring true. Matthew pushed a chair up to the fire and she sat down in it. Matthew watched her, sparkling even in the firelight.

“Such a fool bunch,” sighed Fliss.

“Not yearning for intellectual heights are you, Fliss?” asked her husband lightly.

She flushed a little and moved back out of the ring of firelight. “It would be absurd, wouldn’t it?”

“Your going in for the intellectual heights? I wouldn’t say absurd, but a bit out of your line, perhaps.”

“Out of my line.”

“Feeling a little down?”

“Bored.”

“We’ll have to get up some excitement,” said Matthew kindly.

She winced. “Don’t treat me as if I were a three-year-old.”

“I couldn’t. I treat you as if you were what you are--a charming woman.”

“You think I’m an awful fool, don’t you?”

He went over to her and leaned over the back of her chair, pushing her hair back from her forehead. “Pretty Fliss!”

She jumped up, away from his touch. “That’s it! That’s all of it. Pretty Fliss! I might be a puppy; I might be an idiot.”

Matthew waited for her to go on, and after a minute she did.

“I get so tired of--of being a jazzer--of having you think I’m just a jazzer. I think a lot of things, truly I do, Matthew,” she added, naïvely.

“Of course you do.”

“Don’t say it like that--soothingly. Say it as if you meant it.”

“Of course you do,” said Matthew in heavy, mock seriousness.

She made a futile little gesture and turned away, wrapping her cloak around her desolately.

“I’d better go.”

“No; stay, and talk to me.”

“Amuse you?”

“Amuse me.”

“I don’t want to amuse you.” She was very pathetic now. “I want to do other things for you, with you. Couldn’t I stimulate you, maybe?”

He laughed. “You do, angel; you do, immensely.”

Then all in a minute she lost control. The primitive instincts in her, so untrained by social or intellectual discipline, so thinly overlaid with “manners,” came through. She was by his side, sobbing, her arms thrown around him like a child’s.

“I want you to love me, to respect me, admire me--like--like you do Cecily!”

Matthew’s face grew really stern. He held her, but without a touch of emotion. Then, when her anger seemed to have spent itself, he drew her to the big chair, down on his knees, patting her hand. After a little she looked up at him as if she sought for a trace of the thing she wanted. His glance met hers gravely.

“When we agreed to be married, do you remember what we talked about and decided? Haven’t I given you everything I promised?”

“Everything.”

That softened him. “And you’ve given me more than I ever hoped for--youth and happiness and comfort and the sight of you. Aren’t we happy enough, Fliss, without mixing ourselves up in a hunt after emotions that probably can’t naturally develop in us?”

“Can’t they--can’t I be more; couldn’t I learn?”

He put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t spoil your own quality, Fliss. And remember that I’m getting older and the capacity for certain kinds of emotion is passing me by.”

“But you feel it for Cecily.”

He set her on her feet like a naughty child and stood facing her. “Fliss, there is nothing in any feeling which I may or may not have for Cecily which concerns you remotely.”

She had probed too deep with her awkward weapons. At the rebuff she stood looking at him wide-eyed, hurt, pathetic.

“I’ve broken our bargain, haven’t I?” she said at length, stumblingly.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll just forget all this. You’ve made me so happy in so many ways, Fliss. A home and you----”

“But I can’t reach down in you; I never get down.”

“It’s all right, Fliss dear. You get down far enough. Don’t let’s wreck things by asking too much of the fates.”

She played her last card. “If, perhaps we had a baby?”

He smiled at her with great tenderness.

“I’d love to have a baby, Fliss dear, but you mustn’t give up or try to give up everything for me.”

She must have seen, as she looked, that no sentimentality would ever break him down, ever penetrate those depths which she had come to revere and to covet so much.

“Let’s go downstairs now, and you can get me some supper, if there’s anything in the house,” he suggested, trying to get back to solid ground again. She shook her head.

“Let me go alone for a little while. Come down later.”

She went downstairs, through the beautiful rooms which she had planned so carefully and which meant so much to her, her head hanging a little as if she had been a rebuffed child. The front door was open, blown open by a gust of wind after her careless closing. Moved by some impulse, she went out on the veranda. The street was quiet. It was a street of affluence, the entrance and door lights on the houses glowing softly, the red lights of motors quietly signaling through the snow. Wealth, luxury, comfort. Perhaps Fliss knew dimly that her only step towards acquiring the strength which might win Matthew’s complete respect was to go away from him now, now that their bargain was broken and she loved him as he did not love her. She might go away.

Glancing up and down the street, she shuddered a little. Then went in, and closing the door, carefully this time, proceeded to the kitchen and set about finding the most delicious possible supper for Matthew.