Athalie Part 60

"Permit me to inform you that I am not. If, in a certain set, wherein I now have the entree, divorce is not tolerated,--at any rate where the divorced wife of an American would not be received,--nevertheless there are other sets as desirable, perhaps even more desirable, and which enjoy a prestige as weighty.

"And I'll tell you now that in case you persist in affronting me by remaining in business in New York, I shall be forced to procure a separation--possibly a divorce. And I shall not suffer for it socially as no doubt you think I will.

"There is only one reason why I have not done so already--disinclination to be disturbed in a social milieu which suits me. It's merely the inconvenience of a transfer to another equally agreeable set.

"But if your selfish conduct forces me to make the change, don't doubt for one minute, my friend, that I'm entirely capable and able to accomplish it without any detriment or anything worse than some slight inconvenience to myself.

"Whether it be a separation or a divorce I have not yet made up my mind.

"There is only one reason why I should hesitate and that is the thought that possibly you might be glad of your freedom.

If I were sure of that I'd punish you by asking for a separation. But I do not suppose it really matters to you. I think I know you well enough to know that you have no desire to marry again. And, as for the young woman in whose company you made yourself notorious before we were engaged--well, I think you would hesitate to offer her marriage, or even, perhaps, the not unprecedented privilege of being your _chere amie_. I do you the honour of believing you too fastidious to select a public fortune teller for your mistress, or to parade a cheap trance-medium as a specimen of your personal taste in pulchritude.

"Meanwhile your att.i.tude in domestic matters continues to annoy me. Be good enough to let me know, definitely, what you propose to do, so that I may take proper measures to protect myself--because I have always been obliged to protect myself from you and your vulgar notions ever since my mother and yours made a fool of me.

"WINIFRED STUART BAILEY."

With his care-worn eyes still fixed on the written pages he rested his elbow on the table and dropped his head on his hand, heavily.

Rain swept the windows; the wind also was rising; his room seemed to be full of sounds; even the clock which had a subdued tick and a most discreet manner of announcing the pa.s.sing of time, seemed noisy to him.

"G.o.d! what a mess I've made of life," he said aloud. For a moment a swift anger burned fiercely against the woman who had written him; then the flame of it blew against himself, scorching him with the wrath of self-contempt.

"h.e.l.l!" he said between his teeth. "It isn't the fault of that little girl across the ocean. It's my fault, mine, and the fault of n.o.body else."

Indecision, the weakness of a heart easily appealed to, the irresolution of a man who was not man enough to guard and maintain his own freedom of action and the right to live his own life--these had encompa.s.sed the wrecking of him.

It seemed that he was at least man enough to admit it, generous enough to concede it, even if perhaps it was not altogether true.

But never once had he permitted himself, even for a second, to censure the part played by his mother in the catastrophe. That he had been persuaded, swerved, over-ridden, dominated, was his own fault.

The boy had been appealed to, subtly, cleverly, on his most vulnerable side; he had been bothered and badgered and beset. Two women, clever and hard as nails, had made up their minds to the marriage; the third remained pa.s.sive, indifferent, but acquiescent. Wiser, firmer, and more experienced men than Clive had surrendered earlier. Only the memory of Athalie held him at all;--some vague, indefinite hope may have remained that somehow, somewhere, sometime, either the world's att.i.tude might change or he might develop the courage to ignore it and to seek his happiness where it lay and let the world howl.

That is probably all that held him at all. And after a while the constant pressure snapped that thread. This was the result.

He lifted his head and stared, heavy-eyed, at his wife's letter. Then, dropping the sheets to the floor he turned and laid both arms upon the table and buried his face in them.

Toward morning his servant discovered him there, asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

The following day Clive replied to his wife by cable: "As it seems to make no unpleasant difference to you I have concluded to remain in New York. Please take whatever steps you may find most convenient and agreeable for yourself."

And, following this he wrote her:

"I am inexpressibly sorry to cause you any new annoyance and to arouse once more your just impatience and resentment. But I see no use in a recapitulation of my shortcomings and of your own many disappointments in the man you married.

"Please remember that I have always a.s.sumed all blame for our marriage; and that I shall always charge myself with it. I have no reply to make to your reproaches,--no defence; I was not in love with you when I married you--which is as serious an offence as any man can perpetrate toward any woman. And I do not now blame you for a very natural refusal to tolerate anything approaching the sympathy and intimacy that ought to exist between husband and wife.

"I did entertain a hazy idea that affection and perhaps love might be ultimately possible even under the circ.u.mstances of such a marriage as ours; and in a youthful, ignorant, and inexperienced way I attempted to bring it about. My notions of our mutual obligations were very vague and indefinite.

"Please believe I did not realise how utterly distasteful any such ideas were to you, and how deep was your personal disinclination for the man you married.

"I understand now how many mistakes I made before I finally rid you of myself, and gave you a chance to live your life in your own way unhara.s.sed by the interference of a young, ignorant, and probably aggressive man.

"Your aversion to motherhood was, after all, your own affair.

Man has no right to demand that of woman. I took a very bullying and intolerant att.i.tude toward you--not, as I now realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because I liked and wanted children, and also because I was influenced by the cant of the hour--the fashion being to demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quant.i.tative reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old Testament, is more stupid than such a doctrine; no child should ever be born unwelcome to both parents.

"I am sorry I could not find your circle of friends interesting. I sometimes think I might have, had you and I been mutually sympathetic. But the situation was impossible; our ideas, interests, convictions, tastes, were radically at variance; we had absolutely nothing in common to build on.

What marriage ties could endure the strain of such conditions? The fault was mine, Winifred; I am sorry for you.

"I don't know much about anything, but, thinking as clearly and as impersonally as it is in me to think, I begin to believe that divorce, far from deserving the stigma attached to it, is a step forward in civilisation.

"Perhaps it may be only a temporary subst.i.tute for something better--say for more wholesome and more honest social conditions where the proposition for mating and the selection of a mate may lie as freely with your s.e.x as with mine.

"Until then I know of nothing more honest and more sensible than to undo the wrong that ignorance and inexperience has accomplished. No woman's moral or spiritual salvation is dependent upon her wearing the fetters of a marriage abhorred. Such a stupid sacrifice is unthinkable to modesty and decency, and is repulsive to common sense. And any G.o.d who is supposed to demand that of humanity is not the true G.o.d, but is as grotesque and false as any African idol or any deity ever worshipped by Puritan or Pagan or by any orthodox a.s.sa.s.sin of free minds since the first murder was perpetrated on account of creed.

"You are ent.i.tled to divorce. I don't know whether I am or not, having done this thing. n.o.body likes to endure unhappy consequences. I don't. But it was my own doing and I have no ground for complaint.

"You, however, have. You ought to be free of me. Of course, I'd be very glad to have my freedom; I shall not lie about it; but the difference is that you deserve yours and I don't.

But I'll be very grateful if you care to give it to me.

"Don't write any more bitterly than you can help. I don't believe it really affords you any satisfaction; and it depresses me more than you could realise. I know only too well what I have been and wherein I have failed so miserably.

Let me forget it whenever I can, Winifred. And if, for me, there remains any chance, any outlook, be generous enough to let me try to take it.

"Your husband, "C. BAILEY."

The consequences of this letter did not seem to be very fortunate.

There came a letter from her so bitter and menacing that a cleverer man might have read in it enough of menace between the lines to forearm him with caution at least.

But Clive merely read it once and destroyed it and tried to forget it.

It was not until some time afterward that, gradually, some instinct in him awoke suspicion. But for a long while he was not perfectly sure that he was being followed.

However, when he could no longer doubt it, and when the lurking figures and faces of at least two of the men who dogged him everywhere had become sufficiently familiar to him, he wrote a short note to his wife asking for an explanation.

But he got none--princ.i.p.ally because his wife had already sailed.

The effect of Winifred's letters on an impressionable, sensitive, and self-distrustful character, was never very quickly effaced.

Whatever was morbid in the man became apparent after he had received such letters, and took the form of a quiet withdrawal from the circles which he affected, until such time as mortification and shame had subsided.

He had written briefly to Athalie saying that business would take him out of town for a few weeks. Which it did as a matter of fact, landing him at Spring Pond, Long Island, where he completed the purchase of the Greensleeve tavern and took t.i.tle in his own name.