CHAPTER XXI
It could not last too long after that, but they ran the whole gamut of possible moods. There were times when the antagonism between them seemed to one or the other so intangible, so imaginary as to be ludicrous; days when the air seemed cleared of dissension and unhappiness; any incident could alter the whole shape of things for them. Some new delight in the progress of the children, some anniversary which it seemed too cruel to let pass in anger, would make them both happy. But they never quite relaxed, never quite felt faith in each other. And the most trivial thing could upset their balance--a fancied slight, a casual statement which was translated into a criticism. On their guard constantly, neither of them felt peace.
The days were absorbing for Dick just at this time, too. In July Matthew had unexpectedly yielded to the pressure upon him to become a candidate for United States Senator to fill the unexpired term of the incumbent who had just died. He had refused many political honors and opportunities before, but this time the political situation looked so black that he could not justify refusal. He knew his usefulness well in a state where blind conservatism and dangerous dissatisfaction were in constant ferment; and his acquaintance and high standing among all kinds of men made his nomination fairly certain. But his decision left Dick alone and depressed. It was not that he did not approve of Matthew’s action, but that they had come to depend upon each other more and more in business. They had worked out the development of the mines together lately. With Matthew away for even a part of the year, responsibility would fall very heavily on Dick, and things were far from satisfactory. A spreading sense of loneliness encompassed Dick. He tried to satisfy himself in the children, but an hour’s play with them, refreshing and delightful as it was, did not give him all he sought or all he needed. Gradually there came silent moods in which he spent most of his hours of relaxation and which were only broken by a plunge into business or into the midst of some noisy party at which Cecily might or might not join him. It did not matter whether she did or not. He was tied to the sense of her instinctive criticism of many of the things he liked and she to her sense of failure.
They were both much interested in Matthew’s campaign. That gave them something to talk about and something to focus a mutual interest upon. But Cecily was suffering even more from a fear of Matthew’s departure than was Dick. Since her mother had died, she, like Dick, had been lonely, but that did not help them to find refuge in each other. Matthew and, curiously enough, Ellen, were the only people in whom Cecily felt there was comprehension of her and approval. She had one conversation with Mother Fénelon when she and Dick reached the breaking point.
“There’s no reason for this,” said Mother Fénelon. “You are a good woman and your husband is a good man. You have duties to each other.”
“Virtue and duties are the least part of marriage to-day, Mother Fénelon. You can’t manage with just those things. You have to use the modern methods. It’s a science to-day to have a husband.”
“Marriage is what it always has been.”
“I’m afraid not. It’s altered with the jazz band and the servant problem and the ‘keep young’ crusade.”
There was more, but to no purpose. The break came immediately after Matthew’s election. Reaction helped perhaps, as did the fact that little by little every one had come to guess that the young Harrisons were unhappy and Della and Madeline and others had come to give Cecily advice.
“You’ve humiliated me beyond all decency,” Cecily told Dick bitterly. “There’s no dignity, no privacy left between us.”
“Then I’d better go,” answered Dick.
She weakened then, but it was all useless and in her mind she knew that Dick must go, that they could not keep on this rending life, which was exhausting them both. Dick went to his club. He wanted to leave the city, but with Matthew’s departure imminent he couldn’t. And with Dick’s definite action bruited about, the young Harrisons became the favorite topic for discussion--discussion which carried its probing back to tales of the first unhappy marriage of Mrs. Warner and made strange and foolish deductions.
Mr. Warner, after listening for an hour to Della, who brought the news home and philosophized extempore on just what Cecily’s mistake had been, took his hat and proceeded to Cecily’s house. It was the day on which the few personal effects which Dick needed had left the house. She met her stepfather in the living-room, rising from a dusky corner where she was sitting with her hands in her lap, strangely idle. The soft white silk of her dress was hardly whiter than her face.
Mr. Warner put his hat and cane down slowly and went towards her, taking both her hands.
“My poor Cecily.”
She did not show any sign of collapse or tears. It seemed to him that she was broken, but the impression did not come from her appearance or her voice.
“Dick thought he’d better go.”
He sat down and tapped on the arms of his chair, an old man habit that had come over him lately.
“Do you want a divorce from Dick, Cecily?”
“Not now. Neither of us wants that now. We’re too--raw.” She shuddered.
“And you’re going to live here alone?”
“Here, with the children.”
“How is Dick going to do without the children?”
“I think he can. He can’t bear living with me for the sake of them and I must have them.”
“Ah, Cecily, this won’t last. You and Dick are a pair of naughty children. I’ve a notion to go down to the club and bring him home by the ear.”
Cecily stiffened. “Promise me you won’t do anything like that! Don’t make it begin all over again now. We’ve tried and tried, and we can’t.”
“But what is it? Is this nonsense Della talks about Dick’s wanting to go out more and your refusing the actual reason you’ve dared to break up your home?”
“That’s what people will say,” answered Cecily, “but of course that’s just a symptom of what’s the matter with us. The trouble is that we don’t think marriage means the same thing; we don’t mean the same thing by it. And every outward expression of my idea jars on him--and his on me. We’ve become angry and furtive and quarrelsome and condemning.”
“And yet I’ll bet you will be reconciled within a month. Perhaps sooner. It may be that this little separation is just what you both need to straighten out all this trouble.”
“Reconciled! Reconciled!” repeated Cecily. “We’ve been reconciled a dozen times in the past year. No, father, that won’t do it.”
He sat silent for a while and she watched from the window in a strange, still way.
“It’s not right nor necessary. I wish your mother were here.”
“I wouldn’t like her to see me a failure,” said Cecily with that note of complete depression.
“Don’t be foolish. You’re not a failure. How could any one with three fine, husky children be a failure?”
“It’s not enough to make success.”
She rose after a little and offered him a cigar.
“Some Dick left.”
“He’ll be back after them,” said Mr. Warner.
She smiled, but it was a tragic little smile.
“You’ll have to smile better than that for the children.”
“I will--for them.”
“Then why not for Dick?”
“Dick doesn’t care for me.”
“Dick does.”
She gave the dreariest little gesture of negation.
“You and your mother are curiously alike, Cecily.”
“No.”
“I have often wondered,” he went on ruminatively after a moment, “if there wasn’t something of a case for Allgate Moore. Of course he treated your mother badly. She never even told me about it, but we all knew. After I married your mother--and I was an older man with somewhat cool judgments, my share of discretion and years of experience--I wondered about him sometimes. Because I had a hard time understanding your mother and a hard time being good to her.”
“But you were good to her.”
“After I had learned how; after I had studied and planned how, so that I might not shock her or frighten her or disgust her or hurt her. You are like her--fastidious, delicate minded, not delicate only in mood, but delicate always. You like fine things and beautiful things. So do most men, but most men like other things too. Your mother could not tolerate in any one what was unbeautiful or coarse--many human things.”
“But she could, for she told me to be tolerant.”
Mr. Warner moved a little in the shadow which had fallen on his chair.
“That’s what I taught her,--what I tried to teach her so that contacts would not be too hard for her.”
“What if contacts are hard? Isn’t it better to preserve truth, to live according to beauty--not to be cheap? I know how silly, how common it all sounds, will sound; the things they will say about Dick and me. But it isn’t true that trivialities have made the trouble. It’s big things, basic things. I don’t want to compromise with an age that seems all wrong in its standards. I can’t bear to form myself on people like Della and Fliss.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good to try that,” said Mr. Warner with a chuckle, “but I wish, my dear, that your humor was a little nearer the surface and that it could come to your assistance when you are unhappy as well as when you are happy.”
“It’s queer about that. I can only see things black and white--happy or sad. It’s a great drawback. Sometimes I try to pretend, but it’s always so easy to see through my pretense.”
Mr. Warner was pursuing his previous line of thought.
“You and your mother are such women as foster the ideals men have about women--if they have any--making ideals for the home which every man treasures or respects. But it’s hard for men to live by their ideals alone and you demand that.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” said Cecily, wearily, “why an effort to keep things close to the ideal men promise you before they marry you should end in failure.”
“If it is failure; but I don’t believe it is. I don’t think you’ve hit the real reason for it. Cecily, is there any third person involved in this?”
“Woman, you mean?”
He nodded.
“Not in the way you mean. We disagree awfully over one woman whom Dick admires,--Fliss Allenby.”
“He’s not in love with her.”
“No. That makes it all the worse. If he were you could understand his taking up her defense every time a criticism of her is made. But as a matter of fact he prefers even her--for whom he doesn’t care and whom I can remember his scorning when I first took her up after we were married--to me. He prefers almost anything to me.”
“Don’t get bitter, Cecily.”
“I didn’t know what that word meant except abstractly seven years ago. Now it seems to express me.”
“Nonsense. Turn on the lights, my dear. We’re too gloomy.”
The conversation became more practical.
“Have you made any money arrangement with Dick?”
“I don’t want any money from Dick. If he’s not living with me, I don’t want his money. I couldn’t bear to touch it.”
“That’s quixotic, my dear, but if you won’t take his, you must let me help.”
“I’ve a little of my own, you know,” said Cecily.
“As I remember, very little.”
“Three thousand a year. Lots of people live on that.”
“How much have you and Dick been spending?”
“About twenty-five thousand. But that was with cars and all sorts of luxuries. We’ll just do without those and I won’t need new clothes for a long time, nor will the children.”
“And when you do?”
“Well, we’ll have to do without them. Or maybe I could earn some money. Anyway I will not touch Dick’s money and I won’t take yours either, father, please. I couldn’t let you support me--and Della.”
“Cecily!”
“That was horrid, wasn’t it? Well, please let me get along as best I can. Let me be honest with myself.”
“You are making it so hard for Dick.”
“Yes. He seemed to take that part much harder than any other. It was the only thing that really seemed to worry him--not to be able to salve things over with money. If he sends me money, I shall send it back.”
Mr. Warner rose.
“I’m going now, my dear. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this or how convinced I am that it won’t last. I want you to let me help you. I want to come and talk to you now and then.”
“Yes, please do that. I shall be lonely once in a while,” she said bravely.
“You don’t mind all the silly talk?”
Cecily shrugged. “I shan’t hear it. No, I don’t think I do, except for Dick a little.”
“Would you like to go away for the rest of the year?”
“I thought of that, but it doesn’t seem wise to take the children away just now. And that, too, would be expensive.”
Mr. Warner went down the street slowly, tapping the darkened pavement with his cane.
* * * * *
“I don’t care to discuss it, Fliss. It’s none of our business.”
“I hope not,” said Fliss.
Matthew frowned at her and she laughed at him.
“You should see the frantic interest of people whose business it most certainly is not.”
“That’s easy to imagine,” he answered. “But I don’t care to be in their class.”
She went on, “Cecily, you know, who has been really not of paramount interest to any one lately, is now the real center of thought. Why she did and why he didn’t and what was the matter and how long it has been going on and if Dick’s stenographer is really involved or if it’s Cecily’s iceman----”
“Spare me that stuff, Fliss.”
“I haven’t been spared. I’ve had it all day. But seriously, Matthew, what is the matter with that fool girl? Why doesn’t she appreciate what she’s got?”
“Does he appreciate what he’s got?”
“United States Senator judicial temperament bound to see both sides. Well, why doesn’t some one open both the kittens’ eyes if they can’t appreciate each other?”
He turned to look at her. “You’re pleased about all this, aren’t you?”
“Well, perhaps just a little satisfied in my heart. Cecily made me the butt of the town for weeks with that Ellen stuff. Do you blame me for a little human nature?”
“I don’t blame you for anything, Fliss. I accept you.”
“And Cecily?”
“I said that was none of our business.”
“Then why spend so long composing notes to her last night?”
He looked at her accusingly.
“In the wastebasket, my dear. I don’t always go over it, but I was so interested. Evidently you hadn’t gone very far with any of the notes.”
“Once in a while I think that nothing but a spanking, Fliss----”
“Wife-beater!”
“I’ll write my notes downtown after this, you know.”
“I suppose so. I’ll have to bribe the janitor to save me the wastebaskets. Well, if you won’t talk about Cecily, let’s talk about Washington. I get a little weak in the knees when I think of all I’ll have to learn. I don’t mean to get too many clothes, either. But the ones I do get----”
“I was wondering if I hadn’t better go on alone at first. I could get a bit adjusted and I can’t see how you can leave your mother.”
Her face clouded. “I know, Matthew. I seem a heartless brute, but there’s nothing I can do; and she gets so irritated at me now; and whenever I go there and try to do anything she and Mrs. Ellis are hobnobbing over horrors in that dreadful way and everything is so awful. Matthew, don’t leave me with them!”
“Why, no, you’d have your own house. It would only be for a little while. But I’ll take you if you want to go so badly. I do get a little sorry for your father. He’s----”
“But I tell you there’s nothing I can do for him. I have tried! But I can’t sit through endless hours of moving pictures and silence.”
“Well, dear, you can’t help if you feel like that. It is probably true you could do nothing.”
“Where are you going to-night?”
“Going to work unless you need me.”
“No, I told Polly Angell that I thought you couldn’t come to dinner and she asked me to come anyway. She found an extra man.”
“Ames?”
Fliss nodded.
“You ought to leave him alone. What do you get out of it?”
But she parried his question with a laugh. “Well, you told me that _you_ wouldn’t make love to me. I have to have some one.”
“Run along--and behave yourself.”
She left his room and going down to the library, picked up the Washington evening papers, turning to the page which gave the social news. Over that she bent a puckered brow, studying names.
BOOK THREE