The Husband's Story: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

“I am asking rather for myself,” replied she. “I married him against my father’s wishes and warning. I have not loved him since the second month of our marriage. If he should be exposed, I think the disgrace would kill me.” Her lip curled in self-scorn. “A queer kind of pride, isn’t it?” she said. “To be able to live through the real shame, and to shrink only from the false.”

“I’ll do it,” said I, with a sudden complete change of intention. “That is, if you promise me he will resign and not try to get a similar position elsewhere.”

“I promise,” said she, rising, to show that she was taking not a moment more of my time than was unavoidable. “And I thank you”—and that was all.

I kept my part of the agreement; she kept hers. In about two years she divorced him because he was flagrantly untrue to her. He married the woman and supported her and himself on the allowance Mary Kirkwood made him as soon as her father’s death let her into her share of the property. When I saw her again—one night at dinner at her brother’s house, before his wife divorced him—we met as if we were entire strangers. Neither of us made the remotest allusion to that first meeting.

Going down to her house with Armitage often and being with her on the yacht for days together, I became fairly well acquainted with her, although she maintained the reserve which she did not increase for a stranger or drop even with her brother. You felt as if her personality were a large and interesting house, with room after room worth seeing, most attractive—but that no one ever was admitted beyond the drawing-room, not for a glimpse.

Don’t picture her as of the somber sort of person. A real tragedy can befall only a person with a highly sensitive nature. Such persons always have sense of proportion and sense of humor. They do not exaggerate themselves; they see the amusing side of the antics of the human animal. So they do not pull long faces and swathe themselves in yards of crêpe and try to create an impression of dark and gloomy sorrow. They do not find woe a luxury; they know it in its grim horror. They strive to get the joy out of life. So, looking at Mary Kirkwood, you would never have suspected a secret of sadness, a blighted life. As her reserve did not come from self-consciousness—either the self-consciousness of haughtiness or that of shyness and greenness—you did not even suspect reserve until you had known her long and had tried in vain to get as well acquainted with her as you thought you were at first. I imagine that in our talk in my office about her husband I got further into the secret of her than anyone else ever had.

One detail I shall put by itself, so important does it seem to me. She had a keen sense of humor. It was not merely passive, merely appreciation, as the sense of humor is apt to be in women—where it exists at all. It was also active; she said droll and even witty things. When her sense of humor was aroused, her eyes were bewitching.

What did she look like? The women all wish to know this; for, being fond of the evanescent triumphs over the male which beauty of face or form gives, and as a rule having experience only of those petty victories, they fancy that looks are the important factor, the all-important factor. In fact, the real conquests of women are not won by looks. Beauty, or, rather, physical charm of some kind, is the lure that draws the desired male within range. If after pausing a while he finds nothing more, he is off again.

Perhaps, probably, my experience with Edna has made me more indifferent to looks than the average man who has never realized his longing to possess a physically beautiful woman. However that may be, Mary Kirkwood certainly had no cause to complain that Nature had not been generous to her in the matter of looks. She was tall, she was slender. She had a delicate oval face, a skin that was clear and smooth and dark with the much prized olive tints in it. She had a beautiful long neck, a great quantity of almost black hair. Her nose suggested pride, her mouth mockery, her eyes sincerity. She was the kind of woman who exercises a powerful physical fascination over men, and at the same time makes them afraid to show their feelings. Women like that tantalize with visions of what they could and would give the man they loved, but make each man feel that it would be idle for him to hope. In character she was very different from her cynical, mocking brother—was, I imagine, more like her father. Mentally the resemblance between the brother and sister was strong—but she took pains to conceal how much she knew, where he found his chief pleasure in “showing off.” I feel I have fallen pitifully short of doing her justice in this description. But who can put into words such a subtlety as charm? She had it—for men. Women did not like her—nor she them. I state this without fear of prejudicing either women or men against her. Why is it, by the way, that to say a man does not like men and is not liked by them is to damn him utterly, while to say that a woman neither likes nor is liked by her own sex is rather to speak in her favor? You cry indignantly, “Not true!” gentle reader. But—do you know what is true and what not true? And, if you did, would you confess it, even to yourself?

You are proceeding to revenge yourself upon me. You are saying, “Now we know why he was indifferent to his beautiful wife and to his lovely daughter!—Now we understand that fit of guilty conscience in London!”