One Woman's Life Part 32

While she was making her arrangements, there was a threatened upheaval in their life. This time it was the magazine. There had been growing friction in _Bunker's_ for some time. The magazine, having to maintain its reputation, had become more and more radical, while the proprietor, under the influence of prosperity and increasing years, had become more conservative.

"You see," Hazel Fredericks explained, "the Bunkers find reform isn't fashionable the farther up they get, and the magazine is committed to reform and so is Billman. There must be a break some day."

She further hinted that if it had not been for Grace's strong hand, the break would have already come.

"She's not ready for Montie to get out, yet," she said.

Milly was much interested in the intrigue, but she could learn little from her husband, who always expressed a weary disgust with the topic.

One evening in early June, just before her departure, he told her that _Bunker's_ had changed hands: a "syndicate" had bought it, and he professed not to know whose money was in the syndicate. Hazel hinted that Grace Billman knew....

Bragdon seemed more than usually f.a.gged this spring, after his annual attack of the grippe. He had not recovered quickly, and his face was white and flabby, as the faces of city men commonly were in the spring.

Milly noticed the languor in his manner when he came to the train to see her off for the summer.

"Do be careful of yourself, Jack," she counselled with genuine concern.

He did not reply, merely kissed the little girl, and smiled wearily.

"Try to get away early--in July," were her last words.

Jack nodded and turned back to the steaming city. Milly, reflecting with a sigh that her husband was usually like this in the spring, sank back into her chair and opened _Life_. For several weeks after that parting she heard nothing from Jack, although she wrote with what for her was great promptness. Then she received a brief letter that contained the astonishing news of his having left the magazine. "There have been changes in the new management," he wrote, "and it seemed best to get out." But neither Billman nor Fredericks had felt obliged to leave the magazine, she learned from Hazel.

She could not understand. She telegraphed for further details and urged him to join her at once and take his vacation. He replied vaguely that some work was detaining him in the city, and that he might come later.

"The city isn't bad," he said. And with that Milly had to content herself.... The summer place filled rapidly, and she was occupied with immediate interests. She said to Hazel,--"It's so foolish of Jack to stay there in that hot city when he might be comfortably resting here with us!" Hazel made no reply, and Milly vaguely wondered if she knew more about the situation on the magazine than she would tell.

It was in August, in a sweltering heat which made itself felt even beside the Maine sea, that a telegram came from Clive Reinhard, very brief but none the less disturbing. "Your husband here ill--better come." The telegram was dated from Caromneck,--Reinhard's place on the Sound....

By the time Milly had made the long journey her husband was dead.

Reinhard met her at the station in his car. She always remembered afterwards that gravelly patch before the station, with its rows of motor-cars waiting for the men about to arrive from the city on the afternoon trains, and Reinhard's dark little face, which did not smile at her approach.

"He was sick when he came out," he explained brusquely; "don't believe he ever got over that last attack of grippe.... It was pneumonia: the doctor said his heart was too weak."

It was the commonplace story of the man working at high pressure, often under stimulants, who has had the grippe to weaken him, so that when the strain comes there is no resistance, no reserve. He snaps like a sapped reed.... The tears rolled down Milly's face, and Reinhard looked away.

He said nothing, and for the first time Milly thought him hard and unsympathetic. When the car drew up before his door, he helped her down and silently led the way to the darkened room on the floor above, then left her alone with her dead husband.

When a woman looks on the face of her dead comrade, it should not be altogether sad. Something of the joy and the tenderness of their intimacy should rise then to temper the sharpness of her grief. It was not so with Milly. It was wholly horrible to plunge thus, as it were, from the blinding light of the full summer day into the gloom of death.

Her husband's face seemed shrunken and pallid, but curiously youthful.

Into it had crept again something of that boyish confidence--the joyous swagger of youth--which he had when they sat in the Chicago beer-garden.

It startled Milly, who had not recalled those days for a long time.

Underneath his mustache the upper lip was twisted as if in pain, and the sunken eyes were mercifully closed. He had gone back to his youth, the happy time of strength and hope when he had expected to be a painter....

Milly fell on her knees by his side and sobbed without restraint. Yet her grief was less for him than for herself,--rather, perhaps, for them both. Somehow they had missed the beautiful dream they had dreamed together eight years before in the beer-garden. She realized bitterly that their married life, which should have been so wonderful, had come to the petty reality of these latter days. So she sobbed and sobbed, her head buried on the pillow beside his still head--grieved for him, for herself, for life. And the dead man lay there on the white bed, in the dim light, with his closed eyes, that mirage of recovered youth haunting his pale cheeks.

When she left him after a time, Reinhard met her in the hall. She was not conscious of the swift, furtive glance he gave her, as if he would discover in her that last intimacy with her husband. When he spoke, he was very gentle with her. He was about to motor into the city to make some arrangements and would not return until the morning, leaving to her the silent house with her dead. She was conscious of all his kindness and delicate forethought, and mumbled her thanks. He had already notified Bragdon's older brother, who was coming from the Adirondacks and would attend to all the necessary things for her. As he turned to leave, Milly stopped him with a half question,--

"I didn't know Jack was visiting you."

The novelist hastened to reply:--

"You see he had promised to do another book for me, and came out to talk it over. That was last Sat.u.r.day."

"Oh!"

"He was not well then," he added, and then he went.

He never told her--she never knew--that he had run across Bragdon quite by accident one day of awful heat, and stopped to exchange a few words with an old friend he had not seen for some time. Bragdon had the limp appearance of a man thoroughly done by the heat, and also to the novelist's keen eye the mentally listless att.i.tude of the man who has been done by life before his time,--the look of one who knows he is not "making good" in the fight. That was what had tortured the lip beneath the mustache.

So on the spur of the moment he had suggested to the artist the new book, though he knew that his publisher would demur. For his fame had raised him altogether out of Bragdon's cla.s.s. But it was the only tangible way of putting out that helping hand the artist so obviously needed just then. Bragdon had hesitated, as if he knew the motive prompting the offer, then accepted, and the two had motored out of the city together that evening. Even then the artist had a high fever....

That night Milly lived over like a vivid nightmare her married life down to the least detail,--the time of golden hopes and aspirations, Paris and Europe, her disillusionment, the futile scurry of their life in New York, which she realized was a compromise without much result.... It ended in a choke rather than a sob. There was so little left!

In the morning Reinhard reappeared with her brother-in-law. She remembered little of what was done afterwards, in the usual, ordered way, until after the brief service and the journey to the grave she was left alone in their old home. She had wished to be alone. So Hazel Fredericks took Virginia to the Reddons and left Milly for this night and day to collect herself from her blow and decide with her brother-in-law's help just what she should do.

VI

THE SECRET

The large "studio" room of the apartment had an unfamiliar air of disorderliness about it. Bragdon's easel was there and his uncleaned palette. Also a number of canvases were scattered about. These last weeks, after he had left the magazine--voluntarily as Milly now learned--he had got together all his painter's things and worked in the empty apartment. When Milly began to pick up the odds and ends, she was surprised at the number of canvases. A few of them she recognized as pictures he had attempted in his brief vacations. Almost everything was unfinished--merely an impression seized here and there and vigorously dashed down in color, as if the artist were afraid of losing its definite outline in the rush and interruption of his life. Nothing was really finished she saw, as she turned the canvases back to the wall, one by one. Tears started to her eyes again. The tragedy of life was like the tragedy of death--the incomplete! The nearest thing to a finished picture was the group done in Brittany of herself, Yvonne, and the baby on the gleaming sands, which he had tried to get ready for the New York exhibition on their return. That had the superficial finish of mechanical work from which the creator's inspiration has already departed. With a sigh she turned it to the wall with the others, and somehow she recalled what Reinhard has said once about her husband.

"He had more of the artist in him than any of us when he was in college--what has become of it?"

The remark stabbed her now. What had he done with his gift--what had they made of it?...

She came to the last things,--the canvas he had been working on the day his friend had found him. The touch of fever was in it,--a grotesque head,--but it was as vivid as fresh paint. Yes, he had been one who could see things! She had a sense of pride in the belief.

Another of Reinhard's sayings came back to her,--

"It's all accident from the very beginning in the womb what comes to any of us, and most of all whether we catch on in the game of life, whether we fit!"

The novelist himself, she knew, had not "caught on" at first. He had confessed to her that he had almost starved in New York, writing stories that n.o.body would read and few publishers could be induced to print--then. They were the uttermost best he had in him, and some had been successful since, but they didn't fit then. Suddenly he arrived by accident. A slight thing he had done caught the fancy of an actress, who had a play made out of it, in which she was a great success. A sort of reflected glory came to the author of the story, and the actress with unusual generosity paid him a good sum of money. From that first touch of golden success he had become a different man. His new and popular period set in when he wrote stories about rich and childish boys and girls and their silly love affairs. Hazel Fredericks and her set affected to despise them, but they were immensely popular.

If he had sold himself, as his critics said, he had made a sharp bargain with the devil. He had become prosperous, well-known, envied, invited.

Milly had always admired his intelligence in grasping his chance when it came.

She remembered now another story about the popular novelist. He had never married, and the flippant explanation of the fact was that he was under contract with his publishers not to marry until he was fifty in order not to impair his popularity among his bonbon-eating clientele, who wrote him intimate, scented letters. But she knew the truth. She had the story from the sister of the girl, whom she had met in Paris. The girl was poor and trying to paint; they met in the garret-days when Reinhard "was writing to please himself," as they say. The two were obviously deeply in love, and only their common poverty, it was supposed, prevented the marriage. It was still desperate love when the fortunate accident befell Reinhard that led him out of obscurity to fame. It was then that the affair had been broken off. The sister found the poor girl in tears with a horrible resolve to throw herself away.

(Later she married a rich man, and was very happy with him, the sister averred.) Milly had always felt that Reinhard must have been "hard" with this poor girl,--he would not let his feeling for her stand in the way of his career. Now she understood better why he would have none of her s.e.x except as buyers of his wares. She admired him and disliked him for it all at once. That was what Jack should have done with her. But he was too tender-hearted, too much the mere man.... Oh, well, these artists with their needs and their temperaments!

Slowly Milly went over all the sketches, one by one. It was like a fragmentary diary of the life she had lived beside and not looked at closely while it was in being. She was surprised there were so many recent ones--all unfinished. She could not recall when he had done them or where. It proved that Bragdon had never really given up the idea of painting. The desire had stung him all the time, and every now and then he must have yielded to it, stealing away from the piffling duties of the magazine office--spat on popular art, so to speak--and shut himself away somewhere to forget and to do. Milly remembered certain unexplained absences, which had mystified her at the time and aroused suspicions that he "was having another affair." On his returns he had been morose and dispirited. Evidently the mistress he had wooed in this intermittent and casual fashion had not been kind. But the desire had never left him,--the urge to paint, to create. And during these last desperate days when, fevered, he was stumbling towards his end, he had seized the brush and gone back to his real work....

At last she had reached the bottom of the pile--the Brittany sketches.