Light-Fingered Gentry

by David Graham Phillips

"But you forget, you've married a poor man," he protested. "We've got our living to make."

"Oh—of course," said she. "I'd hate for you to be anything but independent."

"If I were, you'd soon lose respect for me, as I should for myself."

"Yes—you must work," she conceded. "But not too hard. You mustn't crowd me aside." She clasped her arms more tightly about his neck. "I'd hate you, if you made me second to anybody or anything. I'm horribly jealous, and I know I'd end by hating you."

The way to reassure her, for the moment, was obvious and easy; and he took it. They talked no more of "our" work until they got back to New York. There, it was hard for him to find time to go to the office; for she was always wanting him to do something with her, and as luck would have it, the things he really couldn't get out of doing without offending her always somehow came in office hours. Sometimes he had a business appointment he dared not break; he would explain to her, and she would try to be "sensible." But she felt irritated—was he not her husband, and is not a husband's first duty to his wife?

"Why do you make so many appointments just when you know I'll need you?" she demanded. "I believe you do it on purpose!"

He showed her how unreasonable this was, and she laughed at herself. But her feeling at bottom was unchanged. After much casting about for some one to blame for this, to her, obvious conspiracy to estrange her husband from her, she fixed upon Narcisse. "She hates me because I took him away from her," she thought; and when she had thought it often enough, she was convinced. Yes, Narcisse was trying to drift them apart. And she ought to be doubly ashamed of herself, because what would the firm of A. & N. Siersdorf amount to but for Alois? Narcisse was, no doubt, clever in a way—but almost anybody who had to work and kept at it for years, could do as well. "Why, I, with no experience at all, did wonders down at Overlook—better than Narcisse ever did anywhere." Indeed, had Narcisse really ever done anything alone? "She has been living off Alois's brains, and she's trying to get him back."

That was all quite clear; also, a loving and watchful wife's duty in the circumstances. She gave Alois no rest until he had agreed to break partnership and take offices alone. "When you've got your own offices," she cried, "what work we shall do! You must go down early and stay late, and I'll have an office there, too."

So weak is man before woman on her knees and worshipful, Alois began dimly to believe that his wife was, in a measure, right; that Narcisse had been something—not much, but something—of a handicap to his genius; that her prudence and everyday practicality had chained down his soaring imagination. He had no illusions as to the help Amy would give him; there, she had not his vanity to aid her in deluding him. But he felt he owed it to himself to free himself from the partnership. Anyhow, something was wrong; something was preventing him from doing good work—and it was just as well to see if that something was his sister. "The sooner I discover just what I am, the better," he reasoned. And he had no misgivings as to the event.

Narcisse made the break easy for him. When she came back from Neva's, she met him in her usual friendly way, and herself opened the subject. "I think we'd better each go it alone," said she, as if she had not penetrated the meaning of his letter. "You've reached the point where you don't want to be bothered with the kind of things I do best. What do you say?"