William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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Atherton!" cried Halleck.
"Don't how? In this particular case, or in regard to wives generally. We can't do women a greater injustice than not to account for a vast deal of human nature in them. You may be sure that things haven't come to the present pass with those people without blame on both sides."
"Oh, do you defend a man for such beastliness, by that stale old plea of blame on both sides?" demanded Halleck, indignantly.
"No; but I should like to know what she had said or done to provoke it, before I excused her altogether."
"You would! Imagine the case reversed."
"It isn't imaginable."
"You think there is a special code of morals for women,—sins and shames for them that are no sins and shames for us!"
"No, I don't think that! I merely suggest that you don't idealize the victim in this instance. I dare say she hasn't suffered half as much as you have. Remember that she's a person of commonplace traditions, and probably took a simple view of the matter, and let it go as something that could not be helped."
"No, that would not do, either," said Halleck.
"You're hard to please. Suppose we imagine her proud enough to face you down on the fact, for his sake; too proud to revenge her disgrace on you—"
"Oh, you come back to your old plea of magnanimity! Atherton, it makes me sick at heart to think of that poor creature. That look of hers haunts me! I can't get rid of it!"
Atherton sat considering his friend with a curious smile. "Well, I'm sorry this has happened to you, Halleck."
"Oh, why do you say that to me?" demanded Halleck, impatiently. "Am I a nervous woman, that I must be kept from unpleasant sights and disagreeable experiences? If there's anything of the man about me, you insult it! Why not be a little sorry for her?"
"I'm sorry enough for her; but I suspect that, so far, you have been the principal sufferer. She's simply accepted the fact, and survived it."
"So much the worse, so much the worse!" groaned Halleck. "She'd better have died!"
"Well, perhaps. I dare say she thinks it will never happen again, and has dismissed the subject; while you've had it happening ever since, whenever you've thought of her."
Halleck struck the arms of his chair with his clinched hands. "Confound the fellow! What business has he to come back into my way, and make me think about his wife? Oh, very likely it's quite as you say! I dare say she's stupidly content with him; that she's forgiven it and forgotten all about it. Probably she's told him how I behaved, and they've laughed me over together. But does that make it any easier to bear?"
"It ought," said Atherton. "What did the husband do when you met them?"
"Everything but tip me the wink,—everything but say, in so many words, 'You see I've made it all right with her: don't you wish you knew—how?'" Halleck dropped his head, with a wrathful groan.
"I fancy," said Atherton, thoughtfully, "that, if we really knew how, it would surprise us. Married life is as much a mystery to us outsiders as the life to come, almost. The ordinary motives don't seem to count; it's the realm of unreason. If a man only makes his wife suffer enough, she finds out that she loves him so much she must forgive him. And then there's a great deal in their being bound. They can't live together in enmity, and they must live together. I dare say the offence had merely worn itself out between them."
"Oh, I dare say," Halleck assented, wearily. "That isn't my idea of marriage, though."
"It's not mine, either," returned Atherton. "The question is whether it isn't often the fact in regard to such people's marriages."
"Then they are so many hells," cried Halleck, "where self-respect perishes with resentment, and the husband and wife are enslaved to each other. They ought to be broken up!"
"I don't think so," said Atherton, soberly. "The sort of men and women that marriage enslaves would be vastly more wretched and mischievous if they were set free. I believe that the hell people make for themselves isn't at all a bad place for them. It's the best place for them."
"Oh, I know your doctrine," said Halleck, rising. "It's horrible! How a man with any kindness in his heart can harbor such a cold-blooded philosophy I don't understand. I wish you joy of it. Good night," he added, gloomily, taking his hat from the table. "It serves me right for coming to you with a matter that I ought to have been man enough to keep to myself."
Atherton followed him toward the door. "It won't do you any harm to consider your perplexity in the light of my philosophy. An unhappy marriage isn't the only hell, nor the worst."
Halleck turned. "What could be a worse hell than marriage without love?" he demanded, fiercely.
"Love without marriage," said Atherton.
Halleck looked sharply at his friend. Then he shrugged his shoulders as he turned again and swung out of the door. "You're too esoteric for me. It's quite time I was gone."
The way through Clover Street was not the shortest way home; but he climbed the hill and passed the little house. He wished to rehabilitate in its pathetic beauty the image which his friend's conjectures had jarred, distorted, insulted; and he lingered for a moment before the door where this vision had claimed his pity for anguish that no after serenity could repudiate. The silence in which the house was wrapped was like another fold of the mystery which involved him. The night wind rose in a sudden gust, and made the neighboring lamp flare, and his shadow wavered across the pavement like the figure of a drunken man. This, and not that other, was the image which he saw.
XXVII
"Of course," said Marcia, when she and Bartley recurred to the subject of her visit to Equity, "I have always felt as if I should like to have you with me, so as to keep people from talking, and show that it's all right between you and father. But if you don't wish to go, I can't ask it."
"I understand what you mean, and I should like to gratify you," said Bartley. "Not that I care a rap what all the people in Equity think. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll go down there with you and hang round a day or two; and then I'll come after you, when your time's up, and stay a day or two there. I couldn't stand three weeks in Equity."
In the end, he behaved very handsomely. He dressed Flavia out to kill, as he said, in lace hoods and embroidered long-clothes, for which he tossed over half the ready-made stock of the great dry-goods stores; and he made Marcia get herself a new suit throughout, with a bonnet to match, which she thought she could not afford, but he said he should manage it somehow. In Equity he spared no pains to deepen the impression of his success in Boston, and he was affable with everybody. He hailed his friends across the street, waving his hand to them, and shouting out a jolly greeting. He visited the hotel office and the stores to meet the loungers there; he stepped into the printing-office, and congratulated Henry Bird on having stopped the Free Press and devoted himself to job-work. He said, "Hello, Marilla! Hello, Hannah!" and he stood a good while beside the latter at her case, joking and laughing. He had no resentments. He stopped old Morrison on the street and shook hands with him. "Well, Mr. Morrison, do you find it as easy to get Hannah's wages advanced nowadays as you used to?"
As for his relations with Squire Gaylord, he flattened public conjecture out like a pancake, as he told Marcia, by making the old gentleman walk arm-and-arm with him the whole length of the village street the morning after his arrival. "And I never saw your honored father look as if he enjoyed a thing less," added Bartley. "Well, what's the use? He couldn't help himself." They had arrived on Friday evening, and, after spending Saturday in this social way, Bartley magnanimously went with Marcia to church. He was in good spirits, and he shook hands, right and left, as he came out of church. In the afternoon he had up the best team from the hotel stable, and took Marcia