One Woman's Life Part 33

These she looked over as one might views of a past episode in life. The memories of those foreign days rushed over her with a sad sort of joy.

There, they had been completely happy--at least she thought so now--until that hateful woman had taken her husband from her. She had almost forgotten the Russian baroness. Now with a start of fresh interest she thought of the portrait and wondered where it was,--the masterful picture of the one who had ruined her happiness. She looked through the clutter again, thinking that it was probably with the Russian wherever she was. But the portrait was there with the rest, wrapped carefully in a piece of old silk.

With eager hands Milly undid the cover of the picture and dragged it forward to the light. It was as if an old pa.s.sion had burst from the closet of the past. There she was, long, lean, cruel,--posed on her haunches with upturned smiling face,--"The woman who would eat." She lived there on the canvas, eternally young and strong. Milly could admire the mastery of the painting even in the swell of her hatred for the woman who had taken her lover-husband from her. He was young when he had done that,--barely twenty-seven. A man who could paint like that at twenty-seven ought to have gone far. Even Milly in the gloom of her prejudiced soul felt something like awe for the power in him, which seemingly justified the wrong he had done her. Even Milly perceived the tragic laws stronger than herself, larger than her little world of domestic moralities. And thus, gazing on her husband's masterpiece, she realized that her hatred for the woman who she believed had done her the greatest wrong one woman can do another was not real. It was not the Baroness Saratoff who had cheated her: it was life itself! She no longer felt eager to know whether they had been lovers,--as the saying is, had "deceived" her. For this ghostly examination of her husband's work convinced her that Jack did not belong to her, never had,--the stronger, better part of him. She had lived for eight years, more or less happily, with a stranger. She understood now that domestic intimacy, the petty exchanges of daily life, even the habit of physical pa.s.sion, cannot make two souls one....

She turned at last from the picture with weariness, a heavy heart. It had all been wrong, their marriage, and still more wrong their going on with it "in the brave way." Well, _he_ was done with the mistake at last, and he could not be sorry. She was almost glad for him.

Her brother-in-law had asked her to look through her husband's papers for an insurance policy he thought Jack had taken on his advice. In the old desk Bragdon had used there was a ma.s.s of letters and bills, a great many unpaid bills, some of which she had given him months and months before and had supposed were paid. There were two letters in an odd foreign hand that she knew instantly must be the Russian woman's. The first was dated from the _manoir_ at Klerac on the evening of their sudden departure. Milly hesitated a moment as if she must respect the secrets of the dead, then with a last trace of jealousy tore it open and read the lines:--

... "So you have decided--you are going back. You will give up all that you have won, all that might be yours,--and ours. I knew it would be so. The puritan in you has won the day,--the weak side.

You will never be content with what you are doing, never. I have seen far enough within your soul to know that.... I ask nothing for myself--I have had enough,--no, not that,--but more than I could hope. But for you, who have the great power in you, it is not right. You cannot live like that.... Some day you will be glad as I am that we were not little people, but drank life when it was at our lips."

Milly dropped the letter and stared blankly at the dark wall opposite.

What it revealed did not come to her with shock, because she had always felt sure that it had been so. What startled her was the realization for the first time how much the experience had meant to both,--the examination of the picture and the silence of death enabled her to understand that. He had had the strength--or was it rather weakness?--to do "the right thing," to renounce love and fulfilment and fame because of her and their child. It came over her in a flash that she could not have done as much. Give up love that was strong and creative--no, never, not for all the right and convention on the earth. Any more than the Russian woman would have given it up! Women were braver than men sometimes.

She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope with a curious feeling of relief, a sort of gladness that he had had even the little there was--those few days of fulfilment, of the diviner other life which with all the years between them they had failed to grasp.

It was the most generous, the most genuine, the most humiliating moment of Milly's life. Yes, she was glad that in all the drab reality of their life,--in spite of the bills, the worry, the defeat,--he had had his great moments of art and love. They were not stolen from her: such moments cannot be stolen from anybody. She wished that he might only know how freely she was glad,--not forgave him, because forgiveness had nothing to do with it. She understood, at last, and was glad. If he should come back to life now by some miracle, she would have the courage after this self-revelation to leave him, to send him back, if not to her,--at least to his great work. Only that, too, might now be too late--alas!

With a quiet dignity that was new, Milly opened the other letter. It was dated only a few weeks before from some small place in Russia. Madame Saratoff explained briefly that she was now living with her children on her mother's estate in central Russia, and she described the life there in its perfect monotony, like the flat country, with its half animal people. "I live like one of those eastern people," she wrote, "dreaming of what has been in my life." She had heard accidentally of the American from some one who had met him in New York. He was no longer painting, she understood, but engaged in other work. That was sad. It was a mistake always not to do that which one could do with most joy. In the whirlpool of this life there was so much waste matter, so little that was complete and perfect, that no one with power had the right not to exercise it.

She sent this letter with the picture he had made of her. It belonged more to him than to her because he had created it--the man's part--while she had merely offered the accidental cause,--the woman's share. And further she wished to torture him always with this evidence of what once had been in him; not with _her_ face,--that doubtless had already faded from his mind. But no other one had he fixed eternally by his art as he had hers. Of that she was sure. "Farewell."

It was cold; it was cruel. And it must have burned the artist like acid on his wound. The letters should have gone with him to his grave....

With a sense of finality,--that this was the real end, the end of her marriage,--Milly did up the letters carefully and folded the piece of old silk about the portrait. They must be returned to the Baroness Saratoff. And now for the first time since they had met and married, everything seemed clear and settled between her and her husband. She was left with her little girl "to face life," as the saying is.

And Milly bravely turned her face towards life.

VII

BEING A WIDOW

Many times during the ensuing months Milly had occasion to recall the remark of a clever woman she had once heard. "There's no place in modern society for the widow." She came to believe that the Suttee custom was a frank and on the whole a merciful recognition of the situation. Every one was kind to her,--unexpectedly, almost embarra.s.singly kind, as is the way with humanity. But Milly knew well enough that no one can live for any considerable period on sympathy and the kindness of friends. The provoking cause for any emotion must be renewed constantly.

It would have been much easier, of course, if her husband had left her and his child "comfortably off," or even with a tiny income. Instead, there were the bills, which seemed to shower down like autumn leaves from every quarter. The kindly brother-in-law, who undertook to straighten out affairs, became impatient, then severe towards the end.

What had they done with their money? For Bragdon until the last weeks had been earning a very fair income. Nothing seemed paid. On the apartment only the first thousand dollars had been paid, and all the rest was mortgage and loan from him. Even the housekeeping bills for the year before had not been fully settled. (It seemed that one had merely to live with a false appearance of prosperity to secure easy credit, in a social system that compels only the very poor to pay on the nail.)

Milly could not explain the condition of their affairs. She had no idea they were "so far behind." She was sure that she had given Jack most of the bills and supposed that he had taken care of them. She protested that she had always been economical, and she thought she had been, because there were so many more things she wanted,--things that all their friends seemed to have. When confronted by the figures showing that they had spent seven, nine, eleven thousand dollars a year,--and yet had many unpaid bills,--she could not believe them and stammered,--"I know I'm not a good manager--not really. But all that!

You must be mistaken." Then the business man showed his irritation.

Figures did not lie: he wished every woman could be taught that axiom at her mother's knee....

"We lived so simply," Milly protested. "Just two maids most of the time,--three this winter, but," etc. In the end the brother-in-law gathered up all the unsettled bills and promised to pay them. He would not have his brother's name tarnished. And he arranged for an advantageous lease of the apartment from the first of the next month, so that after paying charges and interest there would be a little income left over for Milly. Here he stopped and made it clear to Milly that although he should do what he could for his brother's child, she must see what she could do for herself, and what her own people offered her.

Big Business had been disturbed of late. He was obliged to cut his own expenses. First and last he had done a good deal for Jack. His wife called Milly "extravagant"--Milly had never found her congenial. In the end Milly felt that her brother-in-law was "hard," and she resolved that neither she nor her child should ever trouble him again.

She had already written her father of her bereavement, and received promptly from Horatio a long, rambling letter, full of warm sympathy and consolation of the religious sort. "We must remember, dear daughter, that these earthly losses in our affections are laid upon us for our spiritual good," etc. Milly smiled at the thoroughness with which her volatile father had absorbed the style of the Reverend Herman Bowler of the Second Presbyterian. To Milly's surprise, there was not a word of practical help, beyond a vague invitation,--"I hope we shall see you some day in our simple home in Elm Park. Josephine, I'm sure, will welcome you and my granddaughter."

Milly very much doubted whether the hard-featured Josephine would welcome her husband's widowed daughter. In fact she saw the fear of Josephine in her father's restrained letter. She contemplated a return to Chicago as a last resort, but it was sad to feel that she wasn't wanted....

At this point Milly began to reproach her husband for failing to leave her and his child with resources. "He ought to have made some sort of provision for his family--every man should," she said to herself. There was manifest injustice in this "man-made world," where a good wife could be left penniless with a child to care for.

Milly always thought of herself as "a good wife," by which she meant specifically that she had been a chaste and faithful wife. That was what the phrase in its popular use meant, just as "a good woman" meant merely "a pure woman." If any one had questioned Milly's virtue as a wife, she would have felt outraged. If any one had said that she was a bad wife, or at least an indifferent wife, she would have felt insulted. A girl who gave herself to a man, lived with him for eight of her best years, bore him a child and had been faithful to him in body, must be "a good wife," and as such deserved a better fate of society than to be left penniless. All her friends said it was a very hard situation.

These same friends were endeavoring to do their best for her, p.r.i.c.ked by sympathy with her evident need. If it had not been for a cheque for two thousand dollars, which Clive Reinhard sent her, "in payment for your husband's work on the new contract," Milly would soon have been without a dollar in her purse. She took Reinhard's cheque thankfully, without suspecting her right to it. Others might suspect. For there was no contract, no ill.u.s.trations made--nothing but the novelist's recognition of a need. The cheque was merely one of the ways he took of squaring himself with his world.

When Milly's women friends heard of it, they said with one voice,--"Thank heaven! If Clive Reinhard would only marry Milly--he ought to!"

Which merely meant that, as he was a rich bachelor who had ama.s.sed money by exploiting the sentimental side of their s.e.x, there would be a poetic justice in his chivalrously stepping into the breach and looking after his dead friend's helpless widow. It would make up for "the others,"

they said, and were enthusiastic over their sentimental plan.

"Milly would make a charming hostess in that big country place of Clive's. It would give her a free hand. What Milly has always wanted is a free hand--she has the ability. And Clive is getting pudgy and set. He ought to marry--he's too dreadfully selfish and self-centred," etc.

Mrs. Montgomery Billman took the affair specially in charge. Of course a decent time must elapse after poor Jack's death, but meanwhile there was no harm in bringing the two together. The masterful wife of the Responsible Editor conceived the scheme of having a private exhibition and sale of Bragdon's work, and that took many interviews and much discussion on Sunday evenings when the hostess tactfully left the two to themselves before the fire, while she retired "to finish my letters."

When she returned, however, she found them dry-eyed and silent or chatting about some irrelevant commonplace. The private exhibition came off during the winter in the "Bunker's Barn," as they called the big Riverside Drive house. A good many cards were scattered about in literary and artistic and moneyed circles; tea was poured by the ladies interested; Milly appeared in her widow's black, young and charming. A number of people came and a few bought. Mrs. Billman contented herself with the sketch of a magazine cover representing a handsome woman and a young boy, which was said to resemble herself and her son. On the whole the sale would have been a dreary failure if it had not been for Bunker's liberal purchases and Reinhard's taking all that was unsold "to dispose of privately among Jack's friends."

The hard truth was that Jack Bragdon had not shaken the New York firmament, certainly had not knocked a gilt star from its zenith. At thirty-two he was just a promising failure, one of the grist that the large city eats annually. And his friends were not powerful enough to make up for his lack of _reclame_. "He had a gift--slight though.

Nothing much done--charming fellow--died just as he was starting, poor chap!" so the words went. If the portrait of the Russian had been there, the tone might have been less patronizing; but Milly had already sent this off on its long journey.

The practical result was fifteen hundred dollars, of which Bunker contributed a thousand, and various convenient sums that dribbled in opportunely from the novelist, "whenever he was able to make a sale." (A good many of Jack Bragdon's things ultimately will come under the hammer when the Reinhard house is broken up.)

And that romance which Milly's friends had staged came to nothing.

Reinhard called on her often, was very kind to her, and really solicitous for her welfare; he also was charming to little Virginia, who called him Uncle Clive; and he had both at his country place for long visits,--abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the novelist's att.i.tude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and it must have been _her_ fault--or else that "other affair" had gone deeper with him than any one supposed.

Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black eyes,--indulgently, kindly,--but through and through, as if he had known her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him, almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women,"

she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories--a man living by himself, as he does!"

And so this solution came to naught.

Milly was "up against it again," as she said to herself. Her small bank-account was fast melting away. (She had her own sheaf of bills that she had not cared to present to her brother-in-law, and she found that a penniless widow has poor credit.) Collectors came with a disagreeable promptness and followed her with an unerring scent through her various changes of residence. It became known among her friends that "Milly must really do something."

The competent wife of the Responsible Editor thought it ought not to be difficult to find something of "a social nature" for Milly to do. "Your gift is people," she said flatteringly. "Let me think it over for a day or two, and I'm sure the right idea will come to me."

She promptly turned the problem over to Mrs. Bunker, with whom she still maintained amicable relations. That lady in due time wrote Milly a note and asked her to call the next morning. Milly went with humbled pride, but with a misgiving due to her previous experiences in the parasitic field of woman's work. When after many preambles and explanations, punctuated by "like that, you know," "all that sort of thing," "we'll have to see," etc., the good lady got to her offer, it sounded like a combination of lady-housekeeper and secretary. With considerable decision Milly said that she did not feel qualified for the work, but Mrs. Bunker was most kind; she would consider her offer and let her know, and left. She had decided already. The memory of her work for Eleanor Kemp,--the humiliation and the triviality of this form of disguised charity,--had convinced her, and Eleanor Kemp was a lady and a friend and a competent person, all of which Mrs. Howard Bunker was not.

"I'd scrub floors first," Milly said stoutly, and straightway despatched a ladylike refusal of the proffered job.

("I thought you said she was in great need," Mrs. Bunker telephoned Mrs.

Billman in an injured tone of voice. "She is!" "Well, you wouldn't think so," the Bunkeress flashed back. "It's so hard to help that sort. You know, the kind that have been ladies!" "I know," the Editress rejoined, without the glimmer of a smile.)