V
Caleb was half asleep on the seat of his carriage. He did not expect any fares, but it was a fine night, and his wife was always disagreeable if he came home too early.
He heard footsteps, and opened his eyes. Two men were coming along the street very slowly, arm in arm. That looked hopeful. He sat up.
Then, as they passed under a street lamp, he sat bolt upright; for he saw that they were both bareheaded and dripping wet, their linen suits sodden.
“Cap’n Vincey,” he said to himself, “and that new young fella!” He shook with silent laughter. “Dey surely been havin’ a good time!” he thought. “Been overboa’d!”
They came on in silence until they reached Caleb’s carriage. The young man hoisted Vincey in, and followed himself.
“Drive to Captain Vincey’s house,” he said sharply.
“Yes, sir!” replied the driver, still shaken with internal mirth.
Off they went along the road, which gleamed softly white in the starlight. A breeze blew in their faces, bearing the sweet and heavy scent of night flowers.
“Napier,” said James Vincey, “I’m much obliged to you. Missed my footing. It might have ended badly for me. Very much obliged to you, my boy!”
“You didn’t miss your footing,” contradicted Napier in a very low voice. “You—”
“My boy,” interrupted Captain Vincey, equally low, “it’s necessary in this life to take a good deal for granted. When you reach my age, you’ll probably have learned”—he paused a moment—“probably have learned to take it for granted that almost every man has a white streak in him. Now we’ll say no more about it, if you please!”
The horse’s hoofs rang loud and brisk in the quiet night. As they passed the door of the club, two men were coming out.
“Who’s that?” asked one of them.
“By jove, it’s Vincey and that new chap—rolling home!”
“Ha! I saw them having a few drinks in the club.”
“Oh, well!” said the other indulgently.
Napier and Vincey both heard the conversation.
“You see!” said Vincey, and chuckled. “My intentions were good—meant to make a neat exit.”
“No need for you to do that, sir.”
There was something in his tone which Captain Vincey had not heard for a very long time.
“My boy,” he said, “see here—I’m not asking for sympathy.”
“Suppose we take that for granted, too, sir?” said Napier.
He might have been a young officer speaking to his senior; or, thought the older man, he might have been a son speaking to his father. Vincey leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and set his teeth hard.
“My boy!” he said. “My boy!”
“Here we are, sir,” said Napier, as the carriage stopped. “Wait,” he told the driver, and helped Vincey out.
Mrs. Vincey was standing in the lighted doorway.
“James!” she cried. “What has happened?”
“Captain Vincey missed his footing,” Napier explained.
“Come in!” said Mrs. Vincey, neat, smiling, and dignified again.[Pg 534]
So Napier crossed the threshold.
“The kettle’s on,” said Mrs. Vincey. “Joey will make some nice hot tea, to ward off a chill.”
“Ha!” said Vincey. “Hot tea, eh?” He glanced at his companion, and then for the first time he saw Napier smile. “My boy!” he said.
Mrs. Vincey, watching them, felt as if an immense burden were lifted from her weary shoulders. This stranger, in his youth and strength and confidence, had come to her aid.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked anxiously.
“Thank you,” said Napier, accepting the invitation.
His dark hair was plastered against his forehead, and the water was running off his jacket into pools on the floor; but he paid no attention to that. The captain presented him, and he talked to Mrs. Vincey about London. He was perfectly quiet and matter-of-fact. He was taking everything for granted.
Joey brought in the tea, and he rose; and Mrs. Vincey hurried out into the kitchen, to cry, because of the look she had seen pass between them. It was a look of faith and love—taken for granted.[Pg 535]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
DECEMBER, 1927
Vol. XCII NUMBER 3
Incompatibility
WHEN THERE IS NO COMPLETE SOLUTION OF A HUMAN PROBLEM, IT MAY BE THAT A PARTIAL SOLUTION IS BETTER THAN NONE AT ALL
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
FROM the window of his office Blakie saw them coming, hand in hand, looking very neat in their white dresses, shiny black pumps, and big straw hats. They came quickly, eyes front, with a rigid, frightened air, among the hurrying crowds of the down town street.
“What’s she thinking of, to let them come alone?” he cried to himself.
Snatching up his hat, he went out to meet them. A man jostled them, and they stepped aside, directly in the path of another man in a hurry, who ran into Irene and went on, frowning. Her hat fell off. She stooped to pick it up, still holding fast to Martha’s hand.
Blakie swung her up and kissed her hot, anxious little face.
“Well, Renie!” he said.
“Daddy!” she answered, with a sigh of relief.
“And Marty!”
“Oh, daddy dear!”
Taking a hand of each, he turned back toward the office. No one would jostle them now—not with his strength to protect them. Poor little devils!
There came back to him, in a rush, all the old savage exasperation he thought he mastered. Just like Katherine, to send them alone!
“Daddy, I’ve got a kitten!” said Martha. “It’s a gray, fluffy one!”
But he was not listening.
“You shouldn’t have come alone,” he said curtly.
“Only just from the corner, daddy! Madge brought us to the corner, and then she pointed where your office was, and there weren’t any streets to cross or anything.” Something in Martha’s voice made him glance down at her. He found her looking up at him with a queer, anxious little frown knitting her brows. “She brought us right to the very corner, daddy!”
“That’s all right, chick!” he said, squeezing her hand. “I mustn’t even hint anything against—Katherine,” he thought. “Poor little kid—she’s worried. This way!” he said aloud. “In here!”
He opened the door of his new suite of offices. A fine suite it was, and he was proud of it.
“Rather different from the old place, eh?” he said.
“Oh, yes!” said Martha.
She had taken Renie’s hand again, and they stood stiff and straight, terribly conscious of so many strange eyes regarding them. They were beautiful children, dark as gypsies, with a lovely color in their sunburned cheeks. Both of them were straight and sturdy, like himself. They were unmistakably his children.
“Dead image of you, Blakie!” said Cris[Pg 537]son, his partner. “Fine kids! Let’s see—how old are they?”
“Martha’s ten and Irene is eight.”
“Lord! How time flies!” said Crisson.
The past six months had not flown for Blakie.
Katherine was to have the children for six months of the year and he for the other six months.
“But you won’t really do that, Lew?” she had said. “You won’t take them away from me?”
Just like her, when she had tried to take them away from him! She had come to his office—that was just like her, too; an outrageous thing to do. They were divorced, by her wish. She had a generous allowance, and he had agreed to everything she wanted, except to give up his children.
“I won’t discuss it,” he had said to her.
At first she had begged and pleaded, with tears streaming down her face. When he remained unmoved, she had grown angry in her reckless, vehement way. He was pretty sure that Crisson had heard her that day, and he often wondered how much Miss Deering had heard. Certainly every one in the outer office had seen her when she went out, with the marks of tears on her face.
He could never think of that day without growing hot with shame. For a moment he even felt ashamed of the children, living reminders of his disgrace. His wife had left him—every one knew that.
“Miss Deering!” he said.
He felt a little thrill of pleasure at the girl’s instant response. She was always so eager, so willing. She answered his call with a smile on her grave young face and a quick glance at him, as if she were trying to read in his face what he wanted.
“Do you think you could entertain these two young ladies for half an hour?” he asked.
“Oh, I think so!” she replied cheerfully. He saw the color rise in her cheeks. She was proud to be chosen for this duty.
She took the little girls by the hand and went off, and Blakie stood for a moment, looking after them. Then he went into his private office and shut the door. There was some work he wanted to do before lunch; but he could not do it. The feel of those little hot hands had stirred him intolerably. His children! He loved them so, he wanted them so! His children!
“I’ll never forgive her!” he cried in his heart. “It was a damnable thing to do, to break up their home! They’re worried and puzzled. Poor little kids!”
His life with Katherine had been a misery to him, but he would have endured it all his days rather than hurt his children. It was she who had left her home. She had told him often enough that she “couldn’t stand it,” but he had never expected that.
“Heartless,” she had called him, and “a stiff, solemn prig.” That had been her standard reproach for him—that he was a prig. When, coming home late, he had found the children still up, romping with Katherine and mad with excitement, and he had protested, she had called him a prig. When he had asked her not to come down to breakfast in a dressing gown, and when he had asked her to be more careful of her gossip before the children, she had said the same thing.
He had wanted to give them a normal, decent life, to assure them a good start.
“And, by Heaven, I will!” he thought. “I’ll have them, alone, for half the year. I can give them some sort of idea!”
Then, at the end of his six months, they would go back to Katherine and her careless, rebellious life—breakfast in a dressing gown; old Madge doing the work of the house just as it suited her; the telephone ringing and people dropping in; Katherine, with her shining black hair in a great, untidy knot, sitting at the piano, singing.
He could never think of her singing without a twinge of pain, because of what it had once meant to him—the big, glorious voice that came pouring from her throat without effort; the feeling in it, the pity, the tenderness. “Theatrical,” he had learned to call it, just as he had learned to look upon her beauty with a fastidious detachment. Certainly she was beautiful—a tall, full-bosomed, long-limbed creature, with a lazy grace in every movement, and a face indestructibly lovely, with dark gray eyes, clear, fine features, and a mouth too wide, too generous, unforgetably sweet.
It seemed to him that whatever Katherine took in her careless hands she ruined. She wasted everything. She had had a magnificent career before her, in light opera, and she had thrown it aside to marry him; and now she had thrown him aside, hurt beyond healing. His love for her had been a madness. He had been swept off[Pg 538] his feet, infatuated, desperate; and she had been so kind in the beginning—kinder than any other woman could be.
“Because she had her own way,” he thought.
He had never criticized her then. He had not been doing so well in business. They had lived in a tiny house in Brooklyn, with only old Madge to help; and he had come home there at the end of the day like a soul to Paradise. He remembered how he used to open the door with his latchkey and go in; and no matter how quiet he was, she would always hear him.
“It’s himself!” she would call to Madge, with the trace of brogue that never quite left her. “Put the dinner on the table, Madge darlin’!”
Then she would come running to him, fling her arms around him, and draw his head down on her breast.
“You’re tired, my heart’s darlin’! There! Don’t you talk! Come in and see what Madge and I have got for you!”
“I’ve got to wash, Katherine.”
“Wash in the kitchen, so you’ll not have to go upstairs, and you so tired, my dearest!”
But he never would wash in the kitchen.
Then they would have dinner, old Madge joining in the conversation as she waited on the table. Katherine had spoiled Madge from the start, calling her “darling,” and sitting in the kitchen to talk with her; but still, how Madge could cook!
After dinner people would usually come in—friends of Katherine’s, whom he did not much like, theatrical people, some of them charming, some of them queer old friends whom she would not abandon. To show her husband that he was supremely important, that he was not left out, she would sit on the arm of his chair, with her hand on his shoulder, bending now and then and kissing the top of his head.
“Talk now, Lew darlin’!” she would say. “Listen now, will you, to what Lew’s got to say!”
But he had not liked such public demonstrations.
“I loved her, though,” he thought. “I was happy.”
He did not want to remember all that. It was intolerable to remember, in his bitterness, those warm, glowing years of love and delight; and yet it seemed to him that it would be wrong and cowardly to shirk the memory, to shut his mind to any of the vivid little pictures that rose before him. He closed his eyes, to see more clearly, and let the full tide of the old pain rush over him. He was a man, and he could bear it. He must bear it.
Katherine had spoiled everything. As he got on in the world, he had had to live differently, and she would not help him. Once he had asked Crisson and his wife to dinner. He was not a partner then, and it was an important occasion for him; but Katherine took it with her usual careless good humor. When her guests arrived, she was not dressed. After a very awkward wait of nearly half an hour, down she came, laughing and lovely—and untidy.
Blakie saw her through the Crisson’s eyes that night. He got a fresh view of things to which he had grown almost accustomed—Madge’s casual fashion of waiting, and the badly ironed napkins.
After dinner she sat down at the piano and sang for them, and her coil of shining hair came loose and slipped down. Mrs. Crisson, with a tight smile, rose and put the pins in firmly, while Katherine went on singing.
They had their first real quarrel that night.
“Can’t you do your hair decently?” he said. “Mrs. Crisson—”
“And her with a wisp of hair that looks like nothing at all!” Katherine cried indignantly.
“That’s not the point,” he told her, but she would not listen, and they said cruel things to each other.
In the morning she was her usual jolly self again, but it was harder for him.
That had been the beginning. Later there had been more and more quarrels—when she had bought things they couldn’t afford, or, in one of her fits of repentant economy, had insisted upon going shabby.
“What do you care at all what people will be saying?” she would say, when he protested.
For she never cared. She came of a good family; her father had been aid-de-camp to the governor of a British colony, but she had never cared.
“No!” she assured him, laughing. “Nobody else cared, either. They all loved me. I could have gone to a ball in a flour sack, and nobody would have cared![Pg 539]”
“But, see here, for my sake, Katherine—”
“I’ll try,” she said, and that same day she bought herself a huge plum-colored velvet hat that appalled him. They had quarreled about that, too.
At first she had only laughed at his criticisms, but as time went on she grew to resent them. In her girlhood, and during her brief time on the stage, no one had criticized her. Every one had loved her.
“And you!” she had cried once. “You’re the one ought to love me best of all, and you do not, Lewis!”
“What about your loving me a little? Won’t you just try?”
There were years and years of that. Even after they had two servants, the house was always a little untidy—not dirty, but with a disorderliness that tormented him. The meals were often late, and she herself was always late. Her friends were forever dropping in. They came to her with all their troubles, and she would lend them money, or give them warm-hearted, prejudiced advice, or just sit listening and crying gallons of tears over some sad tale. Then she would want to tell her husband all about it, and would grow angry at his lack of sympathy.
All this went on until there was nothing left but bitterness between them; and then she had gone away with the children and had written him a letter to say that she was not coming back.
He remembered that first night in the house. He had gone into her room, all in disorder from her packing, and then into the empty nursery, where Renie’s despised and ill-used rag doll sat in a broken rocking chair. If he could have seen Katherine then he would have begged her to come back; but when it came to writing a letter, that was a different matter. He had his pride to consider.
He had written briefly, asking her to come back for the sake of the children, and he had had an answer from her lawyer. He had not been sorry. Lonely as he was, there was an immense relief in that loneliness, and there was a dignity which had long been lacking. It was as if he had found his soul again.
Finished now all their life together; but life itself was not finished. Blakie was only forty-five, and there were years and years ahead of him.
He thought of Frances Deering, with the curious uneasiness that the thought of her always caused him. He couldn’t help knowing! She was very grave, very businesslike in her manner, but he couldn’t help knowing!
Sometimes, when he caught her looking at him, the honest, innocent admiration in her eyes gave him a thrill of pride and pleasure. At other times it troubled and irritated him. Twenty-two she was, not much more than a kid—a good girl, and a pretty one, but he was not interested in that sort of thing. He had loved Katherine with a love that would never come again, and he wanted no more of that.
Yet sometimes, in his hours of dejection and loneliness, he would think of the solace of an honest, faithful affection, of what it would mean to have some one waiting for him at home, some one to care if he were ill, a companion for his older years.
With an impatient frown he pushed away his papers and rose. He couldn’t work now.
As he went into the outer office he saw Frances sitting at her desk, with the little girls beside her, all of them busy cutting out rabbits from colored memorandum pads, and talking quietly together. Something in the sight displeased him. The girl’s fair head, as it bent down toward the children, had a meek look about it. Her quick and whole-hearted acceptance of all Blakie’s orders made him feel like a sort of sultan, a very lonely autocrat. He didn’t like that.
“Thanks, very much, Miss Deering,” he said. “Now, kids!”
Her eyes sought his face, as if to read there the meaning of his crisp, impersonal tone.
“What have I done that you don’t like?” her eyes asked.
“You are not the one,” his heart answered. “You are good and pretty and young, but you are not the one. What you want to see in my face no woman will ever see again!”