The Second Generation Part 41

"Has he consented to let them give him a salary yet?" asked Adelaide, not because she was interested, but because she desperately felt that the conversation must be kept alive. Perhaps Ross was even now on his way to Saint X.

"He still gets what he fixed on at first--ten dollars a week more than the foreman."

"Honestly, Madelene," said Adelaide, in a flush and flash of irritation, "don't you think that's absurd? With the responsibility of the whole business on his shoulders, you know he ought to have more than a common workman."

"In the first place you must not forget that everyone is paid very high wages at the university works now."

"And he's the cause of that--of the mills doing so well," said Del. She could see Ross entering the gates--at the house--inquiring--What was she talking to Madelene about? Yes, about Arthur and the mills. "Even the men that criticise him--Arthur, I mean--most severely for 'sowing discontent in the working cla.s.s,' as they call it," she went on, "concede that he has wonderful business ability. So he ought to have a huge salary."

"No doubt he earns it," replied Madelene. "But the difficulty is that he can't take it without it's coming from the other workmen. You see, money is coined sweat. All its value comes from somebody's labor. He deserves to be rewarded for happening to have a better brain than most men, and for using it better. But there's no fund for rewarding the clever for being cleverer than most of their fellow-beings, any more than there's a fund to reward the handsome for being above the average in looks. So he has to choose between robbing his fellow-workmen, who are in his power, and going without riches. He prefers going without."

"That's very n.o.ble of you both, I'm sure," said Adelaide absently.

The Chicago express would be getting in at four o'clock--about five hours. Absurd! The morning papers said Mr. Whitney had had a relapse.

"Very n.o.ble," she repeated absently. "But I doubt if anybody will appreciate it."

Madelene smiled cheerfully. "That doesn't worry Arthur or me," said she, with her unaffected simplicity. "We're not looking for appreciation.

We're looking for a good time." Del, startled, began to listen to Madelene. A good time--"And it so happens," came in Madelene's sweet, honest voice, "that we're unable to have it, unless we feel that we aren't getting it by making some one else have a not-so-good time or a very bad time indeed. You've heard of Arthur's latest scheme?"

"Some one told me he was playing smash at the mills, encouraging the workmen to idleness and all that sort of thing," said Del. Somehow she felt less feverish, seemed compelled to attention by Madelene's voice and eyes. "But I didn't hear or understand just how."

"He's going to establish a seven-hours' working day; and, if possible, cut it down to six." Madelene's eyes were sparkling. Del watched her longingly, enviously. How interested she was in these useful things. How fine it must be to be interested where one could give one's whole heart without concealment--or shame! "And," Madelene was saying, "the university is to change its schedules so that all its practical courses will be at hours when men working in the factory can take them. It's simply another development of his and Dory's idea that a factory belonging to a university ought to set a decent example--ought not to compel its men to work longer than is necessary for them to earn at honest wages a good living for themselves and their families."

"So that they can sit round the saloons longer," suggested Adelaide, and then she colored and dropped her eyes; she was repeating Ross's comment on this sort of "concession to the working cla.s.ses." She had thought it particularly acute when he made it. Now--

"No doubt most of them will spend their time foolishly at first,"

Madelene conceded. "Working people have had to work so hard for others--twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, just to be allowed to live--that they've had really no free time at all; so they've had no chance to learn how to spend free time sensibly. But they'll learn, those of them that have capacity for improvement. Those that haven't will soon drop out."

"The factories can't make money on such a plan as that," said Adelaide, again repeating a remark of Ross's, but deliberately, because she believed it could be answered, wished to hear it answered.

"No, not dividends," replied Madelene. "But dividends are to be abolished in that department of the university, just as they are in the other departments. And the money the university needs is to come from tuition fees. Everyone is to pay for what he gets. Some one has to pay for it; why not the person who gets the benefit? Especially when the university's farms and workshops and factories give every student, man and woman, a chance to earn a good living. I tell you Adelaide, the time is coming when every kind of school except kindergarten will be self-supporting.

And then you'll see a human race that is really fine, really capable, has a real standard of self-respect."

As Madelene talked, her face lighted up and all her latent magnetism was radiating. Adelaide, for no reason that was clear to her, yielded to a surge of impulse and, half-laughing, half in tears, suddenly kissed Madelene. "No wonder Arthur is mad about you, stark mad," she cried.

Madelene was for a moment surprised out of that perfect self-unconsciousness which is probably the rarest of human qualities, and which was her greatest charm to those who knew her well. She blushed furiously and angrily. Her and Arthur's love was to her most sacred, absolutely between themselves. When any outsider could observe them, even her sister Walpurga, she seemed so much the comrade and fellow-worker in her att.i.tude toward him that people thought and spoke of their married life as "charming, but cold." Alone with him, she showed that which was for him alone--a pa.s.sion whose strength had made him strong, as the great waves give their might to the swimmer who does not shrink from adventuring them. Adelaide's impulsive remark, had violated her profoundest modesty; and in the shock she showed it.

"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Adelaide, though she did not realize wherein she had offended. Love was an unexplored, an unsuspected mystery to her then--the more a mystery because she thought she knew from having read about it and discussed it and reasoned about it.

"Oh, I understand," said Madelene, contrite for her betraying expression.

"Only--some day--when you really fall in love--you'll know why I was startled."

Adelaide shrank within herself. "Even Madelene," thought she, "who has not a glance for other people's affairs, knows how it is between Dory and me."

It was Madelene's turn to be repentant and apologetic. "I didn't mean quite that," she stammered. "Of course I know you care for Dory--"

The tears came to Del's eyes and the high color to her cheeks. "You needn't make excuses," she cried. "It's the truth. I don't care--in _that_ way."

A silence; then Madelene, gently: "Was this what you came to tell me?"

Adelaide nodded slowly. "Yes, though I didn't know it."

"Why tell _me_?"

"Because I think I care for another man." Adelaide was not looking away.

On the contrary, as she spoke, saying the words in an even, reflective tone, she returned her sister-in-law's gaze fully, frankly. "And I don't know what to do. It's very complicated--doubly complicated."

"The one you were first engaged to?"

"Yes," said Del. "Isn't it pitiful in me?" And there was real self-contempt in her voice and in her expression. "I a.s.sumed that I despised him because he was selfish and calculating, and _such_ a sn.o.b!

Now I find I don't mind his selfishness, and that I, too, am a sn.o.b." She smiled drearily. "I suppose you feel the proper degree of contempt and aversion."

"We are all sn.o.bs," answered Madelene tranquilly. "It's one of the deepest dyes of the dirt we came from, the hardest to wash out."

"Besides," pursued Adelaide, "he and I have both learned by experience--which has come too late; it always does."

"Not at all," said Madelene briskly. "Experience is never too late. It's always invaluably useful in some way, no matter when it comes."

Adelaide was annoyed by Madelene's lack of emotion. She had thought her sister-in-law would be stirred by a recital so romantic, so dark with the menace of tragedy. Instead, the doctor was acting as if she were dealing with mere measles. Adelaide, unconsciously, of course--we are never conscious of the strong admixture of vanity in our "great" emotions--was piqued into explaining. "We can never be anything to each other. There's Dory; then there's Theresa. And I'd suffer anything rather than bring shame and pain on others."

Madelene smiled--somehow not irritatingly--an appeal to Del's sense of proportion. "Suffer," repeated she. "That's a good strong word for a woman to use who has health and youth and beauty, and material comfort--and a mind capable of an infinite variety of interests."

Adelaide's tragic look was slipping from her. "Don't take too gloomy a view," continued the physician. "Disease and death and one other thing are the only really serious ills. In this case of yours everything will come round quite smooth, if you don't get hysterical and if Ross Whitney is really in earnest and not"--Madelene's tone grew even more deliberate--"not merely getting up a theatrical romance along the lines of the 'high-life' novels you idle people set such store by." She saw, in Del's wincing, that the shot had landed. "No," she went on, "your case is one of the commonplaces of life among those people--and they're in all cla.s.ses--who look for emotions and not for opportunities to be useful."

Del smiled, and Madelene hailed the returning sense of humor as an encouraging sign.

"The one difficult factor is Theresa," said Madelene, pushing on with the prescription. "She--I judge from what I've heard--she's what's commonly called a 'poor excuse for a woman.' We all know that type. You may be sure her vanity would soon find ways of consoling her. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred where one holds on after the other has let go the reason is vanity, wounded vanity--where it isn't the material consideration that explains why there are so many abandoned wives and so few abandoned husbands. Theresa doesn't really care for her husband; love that isn't mutual isn't love. So she'd come up smiling for a second husband."

"She's certainly vain," said Del. "Losing him would all but kill her."

"Not if it's done tactfully," replied Madelene. "Ross'll no doubt be glad to sacrifice his own vanity and so arrange matters that she'll be able to say and feel that she got rid of him, not he of her. Of course that means a large sacrifice of his vanity--and of yours, too. But neither of you will mind that."

Adelaide looked uncomfortable; Madelene took advantage of her abstraction to smile at the confession hinted in that look.

"As for Dory--"

At that name Del colored and hung her head.

"As for Dory," repeated Madelene, not losing the chance to emphasize the effect, "he's no doubt fond of you. But no matter what he--or you--may imagine, his fondness cannot be deeper than that of a man for a woman between whom and him there isn't the perfect love that makes one of two."

"I don't understand his caring for me," cried Del. "I can't believe he does." This in the hope of being contradicted.

But Madelene simply said: "Perhaps he'd not feel toward you as he seems to think he does if he hadn't known you before you went East and got fond of the sort of thing that attracts you in Ross Whitney. Anyhow, Dory's the kind of man to be less unhappy over losing you than over keeping you when you didn't want to stay. You may be like his eyes to him, but you know if that sort of man loses his sight he puts seeing out of the calculation and goes on just the same. Dory Hargrave is a _man_; and a real man is bigger than any love affair, however big."

Del was trying to hide the deep and smarting wound to her vanity. "You are right, Madelene," said she. "Dory _is_ cold."

"But I didn't say that," replied Madelene. "Most of us prefer people like those flabby sea creatures that are tossed aimlessly about by the waves and have no permanent shape or real purposes and desires, but take whatever their feeble tentacles can hold without effort." Del winced, and it was the highest tribute to Dr. Madelene's skill that the patient did not hate her and refuse further surgery. "We're used to that sort,"

continued she. "So when a really alive, vigorous, pushing, and resisting personality comes in contact with us, we say, 'How hard! How unfeeling!'

The truth, of course, is that Ross is more like the flabby things--his environment dominates him, while Dory dominates his environment. But you like the Ross sort, and you're right to suit yourself. To suit yourself is the only way to avoid making a complete failure of life. Wait till Dory comes home. Then talk it out with him. Then--free yourself and marry Ross, who will have freed himself. It's quite simple. People are broad-minded about divorce nowadays. It never causes serious scandal, except among those who'd like to do the same, but don't dare."

It certainly was easy, and ought to have been attractive. Yet Del was not attracted. "One can't deal with love in such a cold, calculating fashion," thought she, by way of bolstering up her weakening confidence in the reality and depth of those sensations which had seemed so thrillingly romantic an hour before. "I've given you the impression that Ross and I have some--some understanding," said she. "But we haven't. For all I know, he may not care for me as I care for him."