A Far Country Part 70

"I knew that you loved her, Hugh," she said. "It was only--only a little while after you married me that I found it out. I guessed it--women do guess such things--long before you realized it yourself. You ought to have married her instead of me. You would have been happier with her."

I did not answer.

"I, too, have thought a great deal," she went on, after a moment. "I began earlier than you, I had to." I looked up suddenly and saw her smiling at me, faintly, through her tears. "But I've been thinking more, and learning more since I've been over here. I've come to see that that our failure hasn't been as much your fault as I once thought, as much as you yourself declare. You have done me a wrong, and you've done the children a wrong. Oh, it is frightful to think how little I knew when I married you, but even then I felt instinctively that you didn't love me as I deserved to be loved. And when we came back from Europe I knew that I couldn't satisfy you, I couldn't look upon life as you saw it, no matter how hard I tried. I did try, but it wasn't any use. You'll never know how much I've suffered all these years.

"I have been happier here, away from you, with the children; I've had a chance to be myself. It isn't that I'm--much. It isn't that I don't need guidance and counsel and--sympathy. I've missed those, but you've never given them to me, and I've been learning more and more to do without them. I don't know why marriage should suddenly have become such a mockery and failure in our time, but I know that it is, that ours hasn't been such an exception as I once thought. I've come to believe that divorce is often justified."

"It is justified so far as you are concerned, Maude," I replied. "It is not justified for me. I have forfeited, as I say, any rights over you. I have been the aggressor and transgressor from the start. You have been a good wife and a good mother, you have been faithful, I have had absolutely nothing to complain of."

"Sometimes I think I might have tried harder," she said. "At least I might have understood better. I was stupid. But everything went wrong.

And I saw you growing away from me all the time, Hugh, growing away from the friends who were fond of you, as though you were fading in the distance. It wasn't wholly because--because of Nancy that I left you. That gave me an excuse--an excuse for myself. Long before that I realized my helplessness, I knew that whatever I might have done was past doing."

"Yes, I know," I a.s.sented.

We sat in silence for a while. The train was skirting an ancient town set on a hill, crowned with a castle and a Gothic church whose windows were afire in the setting sun.

"Maude," I said, "I have not come to plead, to appeal to your pity as against your judgment and reason. I can say this much, that if I do not love you, as the word is generally understood, I have a new respect for you, and a new affection, and I think that these will grow. I have no doubt that there are some fortunate people who achieve the kind of mutual love for which it is human to yearn, whose pa.s.sion is naturally trans.m.u.ted into a feeling that may be even finer, but I am inclined to think, even in such a case, that some effort and unselfishness are necessary. At any rate, that has been denied to us, and we can never know it from our own experience. We can only hope that there is such a thing,--yes, and believe in it and work for it."

"Work for it, Hugh?" she repeated.

"For others--for our children. I have been thinking about the children a great deal in the last few months especially about Matthew."

"You always loved him best," she said.

"Yes," I admitted. "I don't know why it should be so. And in spite of it, I have neglected him, neglected them, failed to appreciate them all.

I did not deserve them. I have reproached myself, I have suffered for it, not as much as I deserved. I came to realize that the children were a bond between us, that their existence meant something greater than either of us. But at the same time I recognized that I had lost my right over them, that it was you who had proved yourself worthy.... It was through the children that I came to think differently, to feel differently toward you. I have come to you to ask your forgiveness."

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried.

"Wait," I said.... "I have come to you, through them. I want to say again that I should not be here if I had obtained my desires. Yet there is more to it than that. I think I have reached a stage where I am able to say that I am glad I didn't obtain them. I see now that this coming to you was something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardly thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conquered the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come to you to enc.u.mber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must have something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for our lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are ent.i.tled to decline to take the risk. I don't fool myself that it will be all plain sailing, that there won't be difficulties and discouragements. But I'll promise to try."

"What is it?" she asked, in a low voice. "I--I think I know."

"Perhaps you have guessed it. I am willing to try to devote what is left of my life to you and to them. And I need your help. I acknowledge it.

Let us try to make more possible for them the life we have missed."

"The life we have missed!" she said.

"Yes. My mistakes, my failures, have brought us to the edge of a precipice. We must prevent, if we can, those mistakes and failures for them. The remedy for unhappy marriages, for all mistaken, selfish and artificial relations.h.i.+ps in life is a preventive one. My plan is that we try to educate ourselves together, take advantage of the accruing knowledge that is helping men and women to cope with the problems, to think straight. We can then teach our children to think straight, to avoid the pitfalls into which we have fallen."

I paused. Maude did not reply. Her face was turned away from me, towards the red glow of the setting sun above the hills.

"You have been doing this all along, you have had the vision, the true vision, while I lacked it, Maude. I offer to help you. But if you think it is impossible for us to live together, if you believe my feeling toward you is not enough, if you don't think I can do what I propose, or if you have ceased to care for me--"

She turned to me with a swift movement, her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Hugh, don't say any more. I can't stand it. How little you know, for all your thinking. I love you, I always have loved you. I grew to be ashamed of it, but I'm not any longer. I haven't any pride any more, and I never want to have it again."

"You're willing to take me as I am,--to try?" I said.

"Yes," she answered, "I'm willing to try." She smiled at me. "And I have more faith than you, Hugh. I think we'll succeed."....

At nine o'clock that night, when we came out through the gates of the big, noisy station, the children were awaiting us. They had changed, they had grown. Biddy kissed me shyly, and stood staring up at me.

"We'll take you out to-morrow and show you how we can ride," said Moreton.

Matthew smiled. He stood very close to me, with his hand through my arm.

"You're going to stay, father?" he asked.

"I'm going to stay, Matthew," I answered, "until we all go back to America."....

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Barriers were mere relics of the superst.i.tion of the past Benumbing and desiccating effect of that old system of education Conscience was superst.i.tion, the fear of the wrath of the G.o.ds Conventionality was part of the price we had willingly paid Conviction that government should remain modestly in the background Everybody should have been satisfied, but everybody was not I hated to lie to her,--yet I did so I'm incapable of committing a single original act It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse Marriage! What other career is open to a woman?

Meaningless lessons which had to be learned Opponent who praises one with a delightful irony Righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy Staunch advocate on the doctrine of infant d.a.m.nation That's the great thing, to keep 'em ignorant as long as possible The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public They deplored while they coveted We lived separate mental existences We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs What you wants, you gets Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child