III
Her hot anger began to cool, to harden into an emotion which she did not comprehend. She stared back at Louis, at first with scorn, but after a moment with puzzled curiosity. Had he always looked like this? Never any different from this?
“You look so kind of funny to-day!” she observed wonderingly.
“Funny? What d’you mean, funny?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said, still staring at him. “Just—so kind of—measly.”
His swarthy face turned dark red, and in a low voice he made a forcible retort; but Miss Riordan was past anger. She was looking at her bouquet, lifting up the drooping heads with anxious care.
“I’ll dry ’em in a nice little jar,” she thought. “I guess they’ll keep forever that way.”
Louis was still talking.
“You’d better go away,” she said casually. “I’m going down to the island.”
He got up promptly.
“I’ll go, all right!” said he. “An’ you can git down on your knees an’ beg me, an’ I’ll never come back. Let me tell you—”
“Oh, go on!” said Miss Riordan with mild impatience.
He walked away, swaggering, his gray felt hat to one side, his toes pointed out, his curly hair pushed up at the back of the neck by his high collar. He passed through the turnstile and out of the ferry house, and then, as far as she was concerned, he ceased to exist. Miss Riordan got up and sauntered toward the gates.
“He’s gone,” she thought. “He’d come back if I’d ask him, but I won’t!”
This was true. Mr. Pirini’s charm had been completely dissolved in his laughter. He had refused to believe in her gentleman.
Thinking of that elderly cavalier, her heart swelled with enormous aspirations. Here she was going to the country for a ramble, and carrying a high-class magazine and that mystically precious bouquet. It seemed to her that a monstrous burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Shame, resentment, and miserable anxiety had departed with Mr. Pirini.
She raised the bouquet to her face and sniffed it vigorously.
“I’m going to get a real comfortable pair of shoes!” she said to herself. “A size—two sizes—bigger!”
The freedom of Miss Riordan’s soul was achieved.[Pg 224]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JUNE, 1925
Vol. LXXXV NUMBER 1
Sometimes Things Do Happen
HOW THE LIVES OF FOUR YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE WERE UTTERLY RUINED—FOR A TIME, AT LEAST
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
MR. SAMUEL PEPYS set down the happenings of his days with unique candor and spirit, and, by so doing, became immortal. Edward Cane also kept a diary. Like that of Mr. Pepys, it was written in cipher, and it had a good deal about the author’s wife in it; but in other ways it was very different.
Edward was passionately concerned with the future. He made prophecies, and it displeased him that these prophecies were not fulfilled. His was a just and reasonable mind. He knew—none better—how things ought to be, and he was displeased that they were not so.
He had, indeed, given up looking through the earlier pages of his diary, because it hurt too much; but he remembered some of the things. He remembered, if not the actual words, at least the spirit in which he had prophesied about this marriage of his. It was going to be different from all other marriages. Why not, since he and his Mildred were different from all other persons? It was going to be a splendid adventure.
“We shall never become stodgy,” he had written.
Well, as far as that went, they hadn’t. Quite the contrary!
This evening he began his daily record:
I have shut myself up in my—
“In my own room,” he was going to write, but that was not exact. It was Mildred’s room, too. She could come in if she liked. He couldn’t really shut himself up anywhere on earth. He crossed out the last two words, and leaned his head on his hands, struggling valiantly to be just, fair, and exact, and to crush down the extraordinary emotions that outrageous woman aroused in him.
Never, before his marriage, had he felt such fury, such unreasonable, ungovernable exasperation. He had had a well deserved reputation for being a strong, self-controlled, moderate young man. That was one reason why he had risen high in the credit department of a mammoth store—because he could handle angry, cajoling, or desperate customers so firmly and calmly; and here in his own home he was utterly defeated.
He raised his head and looked about him. He saw Mildred’s things everywhere, crowding and jostling his things—even her silly white comb standing up in one of his military brushes.
“Well, what of it?” he asked himself. “I’m orderly and she’s not. I always knew that.”
No use—he could not be philosophic about it. He got up and removed the comb with a jerk. As he did so, he caught sight of his own face in the mirror. It startled him. It was a strained and haggard face.
“I can’t stand this!” he said to himself. “This can’t go on!”
And just at this moment the door burst open and she—the cause of all his exasperation—appeared in the doorway.
“Edward!” she said in a furious, trembling voice. “Will you get that ladder, or won’t you?”
“I will not,” he replied.
His own voice was not altogether steady, but he was much calmer than she. She had been crying—he could see that; and, as he faced her, she began to cry again.[Pg 226]
“You beast!” she cried. “You selfish, heartless—”
“Look here!” said Edward. “I can’t—I won’t stand any more of this! I’m sick and tired—”
“And what about me?” she retorted. “After your promising to make me happy!”
That was too much. Edward could have reminded her of things she had promised, but he scorned to do so. Contempt overwhelmed him. She had no scruples. The only thing on earth she cared about was to get her own way; and she wasn’t going to get it—not this time! Her monstrous unfairness, her ruthless egotism, appalled him. He felt anger mounting to his brain, destroying his fine moderation.
“Look here!” he began.
“I won’t!” said she. “If I’d had any idea what you were really like, I’d never have married you, Edward Cane!”
“No doubt!” said Edward frigidly. “However, another woman—”
All he had been going to say was that another woman—any other woman in the world, indeed—would have considered him a fairly good husband; but Mildred chose to take his words in a different spirit.
“Another woman!” said she, and laughed.
“If things happened as they should,” Edward went on, with heightened color, “I’d go away—now. I’d go off—”
“With another woman!” said she, and laughed again.
He was glad to hear the doorbell ring. If he hadn’t gone out of the room just then, he felt that he would certainly have put himself in the wrong. His patience was exhausted.
“Oh, are you leaving me now, Edward?” Mildred called after him mockingly. “Hadn’t you better take a clean collar—or a toothbrush, at least?”
Evidently she hadn’t heard the bell, and he did not condescend to enlighten her. He made up his mind not to speak to her again, no matter what the provocation. He went on down the stairs to the front door, and opened it.
“Edward!” she cried.
Ha! She was giving herself away now! She was worried!
He opened the door wider, and, as he did so, he heard her start down the stairs. It was only a bill, left lying on the veranda. He stepped out to pick it up.
“Edward!” he heard her call. “Eddie!”
A sudden gust of wind blew the door to with a crash, and an equally sudden impulse made him go hastily down the steps and along the path.
The front door opened.
“Eddie!” she called. “Come back this instant!”
He strode up the road and turned the corner.
“Do her good!” he said grimly to himself. “Now I’m out, I’ll just stay out for a while. I’ll smoke, and take a stroll.”
Unfortunately, however, he had changed into an old coat, and had nothing to smoke with him, and no money to buy anything. Also, he was hatless. He shrugged his shoulders with a fine gesture of indifference. He could stroll, anyhow, and think—think this thing out to the bitter end.
It was all bitter, beginning and middle as well as the end. Mildred wished to make a slave of him, to break his spirit, to destroy his manly pride. No—this should not be!
It was a strange, uneasy sort of night—blowing up for rain, he thought. Filmy black clouds went racing across a pallid sky, and the trees rocked and tossed. It was cool, too, for May. He quickened his steps a little.
“I’m upset,” he thought. “I’m more upset than I realized.”
Somehow, the familiar suburban street had a new and almost sinister aspect. The trim houses with their lighted windows looked like houses on the stage—delusions, with no backs to them. Faint and eerie music was coming through some one’s radio. A dog howled, far away. Everything was different.
“This is a fool trick,” he thought suddenly. “I can’t stay out here. I’ll go back and—and simply not answer her.”