One Woman's Life Part 24

"I must go back now to get Sam's _dejeuner_. Won't you come? He'd love to see you--he often speaks about you and your husband."

Milly accepted readily enough. Although she did not agree with all that Marion Reddon had said, she was soothed by the talk, and she had a curiosity to see the Reddon _menage_ in operation.

"So," she remarked, as they pa.s.sed through the great gilt gate out to the noisy street, "you think a woman should have children to keep a man true to her."

"Tied to her," Marion Reddon emended, "and truer than he otherwise might be. Then they are something in case the husband quits altogether--if he turns out to be a bad lot. Most of them don't, of course; they are loyal and faithful. But if they do, then a woman has the children, and that's a world for any one."

"It makes it all the worse--if she has to support them without a man's help."

"I wonder! It's the incentive that makes work effective, isn't it?"

They crossed the vivid stream of the boulevard, the child between them, and mounted the hill towards the Pantheon.

"You know the time is coming when the woman will again be the responsible head of the family in form as she is in fact to-day, and then she will tolerate the man about her house just so long as she thinks him a fit father, and take another if she prefers him as the father of her children."

These anarchistic doctrines had a quaint absurdity on the lips of this mild, little New England woman. Milly, not having lived in circles where the fundamental relations of life were discussed with such philosophical frankness, was puzzled. The Reddons must be "queer" people, she thought.

"So I tell Sam when he gets fussy that if he isn't careful, I'll _flanquer la porte_ to him and run the shop myself."

"My!"

"I could, too, and he knows it--which is very salutary for him when he gets uppish and dictatorial, as all men will at times."

"How could you?"

"You see I'm an expert taxidermist. I learned the thing vacations to help an uncle out, who was a collector. I could always make a living at it, and one for the kiddies too. That's the nub of the whole matter, as we used to say in the country."

(Later, Milly remembered this talk in its every bearing, and had reason to appreciate the profound truth of the last statement.)

"But you love your husband," Milly remarked as if to rea.s.sure herself.

"Of course I do, or I shouldn't be living with him and bearing his children. But he needs me and the children rather more than I need him--which is the better way."

The Reddons lived on the fourth floor back of an old lantern-jawed building that tilted uphill behind Ste. Genevieve. Milly found the stairs steep and dark and the odor of the old building anything but pleasant. Marion a.s.sured her cheerfully that the smell was not unhealthy, and as they kept their windows open most of the time they did not mind it. The three little rooms of the _apartement meublee_ were dingy, to say the least, but they looked out over the clock tower of Ste. Genevieve into an old college garden.

"I make Sam get the coffee mornings, and I do the _dejeuner_; then an old woman comes in to clean us up and cook dinner, if we don't go out.

Sam is rather given to the student cafes."

Mrs. Reddon moved dexterously within the confined limits of the closet kitchen and continued to describe her household. "You see we pay only thirty dollars a month for this place, and I cover the housekeeping bills with another thirty or a little more."

"Heavens! How can you do it?" Milly gasped.

Their pension was over that amount apiece.

"It's cheaper than anything at home, and lots more fun!"

Presently Sam Reddon came whistling upstairs. He stopped in histrionic surprise at sight of Milly.

"Not really, Milady! How did you find your way?"

"By accident."

"Ma," he sang out to his wife, "you aren't going to try one of your historic stews on Mrs. Bragdon--our one fashionable visitor of the season? Don't you think we had better make an occasion of this and adjourn to Foyot's?"

"No," his wife replied firmly, "you've had too many 'occasions' this month. One of my _dejeuners_ won't hurt Mrs. Bragdon or you either."

"Well," he submitted dolefully, "she can't drink that red ink you mistakenly bought for wine, my dear.... I'll just fetch a bottle of something drinkable."

"Hurry then! _Dejeuner_ is quite ready."

"You see," she observed placidly as Reddon departed, "he takes every excuse to escape his work and make a holiday. It wasn't altogether _you_, my dear!"

"It's so human!"

"It's so--Sam."

They had a very jolly luncheon, and afterwards, the old servant having arrived to take charge of the apartment and Elsie, the two women accompanied Reddon down the hill as far as the Sorbonne, where Marion was attending a course of lectures. Milly gathered that the little woman, in spite of her housekeeping, the one child on the spot, and another coming, had many lively interests and saw far more of Paris, which she loved, than Milly and her husband did. Both the Reddons lived carelessly, but lived hard every minute, taking all their chances, good and bad, of the minutes to come. It was a useful philosophy, but not one that Milly wholly admired.

Late that afternoon Milly met her husband in a frame of mind much more serene than it was before she saw the Reddons, and told him her momentous news. He seemed more pleased and less disturbed by it than she had supposed possible. A few days later he got the proof-sheets of Reinhard's novel from the trunk, where they had been lying neglected, and worked diligently on the foolish sketches required by the text to ill.u.s.trate the hero and heroine in their "tense" moments. He finished the job before they left Paris in March, which was his male way of acknowledging the new obligation that was on its way.

Milly thought there might be something in Marion Reddon's ideas about men, after all.

VI

THE CHILD

After much debate Milly resolved to take a leaf from Marion Reddon's philosophy and not let her "condition" make any difference in her husband's plans; they should not give up the trip to Italy because of possible dangers or discomforts to her. So they went to Florence and afterwards to Rome, where the Reddons, having miraculously procured the price of the railroad tickets at the last moment, joined them and gave them lessons in how to see Europe as the Europeans see it. After a short visit to Venice, the two families settled for the summer in a quiet little village of the Austrian Tyrol, where the men tried to work, but for the most part climbed mountains and drank beer instead. Then in September they were back in Paris; the Reddons, who had exhausted all their resources, went home to America for the year's grind in the technical school; and the Bragdons settled in a small house in Neuilly.

And there early in October Milly's little girl came safely into the world.

The small brick house with its sc.r.a.p of garden and gravelled drive proved to be the pleasantest of Milly's European experiences. It was the most regularly domestic thing they did. The artist still went to the school in the mornings, but worked at home in the afternoons. Milly convalesced healthily and was properly absorbed in her baby and her house, so that she did not feel lonely during her husband's absences in Paris. Now that the child had got into the world, after all her fears and forebodings, Milly was surprised at the naturalness of the event. As Marion Reddon had said, it really simplified life. First consideration must always be the Baby. Mdle. Virginia, as she was called after Milly's mother, could do so little in this world at present that its parents'

ambitions were necessarily curbed. Milly was an admirably devoted mother. She had always liked babies since she was a very little girl, and she became wholly wrapped up in her own human venture. The summer while the child was coming had drawn her very close to Marion Reddon, with whom she had established a staunch bond of the woman's league, offensive and defensive, against men. Marion, she felt, understood both babies and men. Although she could not approve of all Marion's ideas about the relations of the s.e.xes, she admired the frank, brave, humorous way in which she solved her own life.

Curiously enough, the child seemed to set Milly apart from her husband--and from the world of men in general. Jack was no longer the supreme emotional fact in her life. He was a good husband; she was more conscious of that than ever before. He had been very tender and considerate of her during her pregnancy, keeping up her spirits, guarding her against folly, insisting on luxuries in their travels so that she might be thoroughly comfortable. Thus he went to Gossensa.s.s, not for his own profit and pleasure, but because the doctor they consulted in Venice advised this secluded mountain resort. And when the time of the birth came, he had been properly solicitous to see that she was provided with the best attendance and care, and Milly knew vaguely that he had spent lavishly of their h.o.a.rd for this purpose. Milly was sure he loved her, and what was also very important to her, she was sure that he was "a good man,"--clean-minded and unselfish with a woman. Even if he should come to love her less pa.s.sionately than at the beginning, he was the loyal sort of American, who would not let that fact furnish him with excuse for errancy. And she loved him, of course--was "quite crazy" about him, as she expressed it to Marion--and still believed in his glorious future as a great painter.

Yet in some indefinable way he had sunk from first to second place in her thoughts and might soon--who knows?--descend to third place in the family triangle. As for all other men, like Sam Reddon and the artists Jack brought to the house, they began to have for her the aspect of coa.r.s.e and rather silly beings, essentially selfish and sensual. "Oh, he's just a man" became more and more in her mouth the mocking formula to indicate male inferiority. Later it was, "They're all alike, men."

Thus the child brought out in Milly the consciousness of womanhood. She was more the mother now than the wife, as was natural, but she had no desire to become again the wife, paramount, to any man....

Meanwhile any one of those who came in upon them in the Neuilly house and saw the father and mother grouped about the baby's ba.s.sinet would say,--"An ideal young pair--has he much talent?"

This winter when she grew stronger Milly saw more of people than before.

She had two very capable servants and her little household ran smoothly, though its cost made severe inroads on the "h.o.a.rd." People she knew drifted through Paris and were glad to lunch or dine in the little Neuilly house. Sally Norton, who was now Mrs. Willie Ashforth, having finally secured the elderly bachelor, was one of the first to come.

Sally laughed over the small house, over Milly's baby, over Milly as a mother. She seemed determined to consider Milly as an irresponsible joke in everything she did, but she was good-natured and lively as always, and absorbed in her own plans. The Ashforths were building at Highland Forest, a fashionable suburb outside of Chicago. Vivie had had a "desperate affair" with a divorced man, etc., etc. Then the Gilberts turned up unexpectedly one day, gracious and forgiving to Milly, and apparently very much bored with themselves in Paris. Milly gave them a nice little dinner, to which she had the smartest people she knew, which was her way of "getting even" with Nettie for the snubs. Others came more frequently as the spring influx of Americans arrived. Occasionally Jack complained of the time these idle wanderers consumed, especially of the precious afternoons lost when they came for luncheon and stayed until tea. Milly thought it selfish of him to object to "her one pleasure," now that "she was tied up in the house." Perhaps he felt so too, for he said no more, and remained at the school to work when there was likely to be company at the Neuilly house. On the whole he was amiably indulgent with his wife, according to the best American tradition.... So with friends, new and old, the second year of their foreign life drew on towards summer. The baby flourished, and all was well. They began to talk of summer plans.