The Husband's Story: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

I am glad I was not born a woman. I pity the women of our day, bred and educated in the tastes of men, yet compelled to be dependents, and certain of defeat in a finish contest with man.

Though there was now no reasonable doubt of Edna’s having the decree of divorce made final, I, through overcaution or oversensitiveness as to Mary Kirkwood’s rights, or what motive you please, would not let myself leave London until a cable from my lawyers in New York informed me that the decree had been entered and that I was legally free. The newspapers had given much space to our affairs. It was assumed that I had come abroad “to make last desperate efforts to win back the beautiful and charming wife, the favorite of fashionable European society.” Stories had been published, giving in minute detail accounts of the bribes I had offered. And when the final decree was entered, my chagrin and fury were pictured vividly.

I did nothing to discredit this, but, on the contrary, helped along the campaign for the preservation of the literary and journalistic fiction that the American woman is a kind of divine autocrat over mankind. If I had been so vain and so ungallant as to try to make the public see the truth I should have failed. You can discredit the truth to the foolish race of men; but you cannot discredit, nor even cast a shade of doubt upon, a generally accepted fiction of sentimentality. And of all the sentimental fictions that everyone slobbers over, but no one in his heart believes with the living and only valid faith of works, the fictions about woman are the most sacred. Further, how many men are there who believe that a man could get enough of a physically lovely woman, however trying she might be? Once in a while in a novel—not often, but once in a while—there are scenes portraying with some approach to fidelity what happens between a woman and a man who is of the sort that is attractive to women. Invariably such scenes are derided or denounced by the critics. Why? For an obvious reason. A critic is, to put it charitably, an average man. He has no insight; he must rely for his knowledge of life solely upon experience. Now what is the average man’s experience of women? He treats them in a certain dull, conventional way, and they treat him—as he invites and compels. So when he reads how women act toward a man who does not leave them cold or indifferent, who rouses in them some sensation other than wonder whether they would be able to stomach him as a husband, the critic scoffs and waxes wroth. The very idea that women might be less reserved, less queenly, less grudgingly gracious than woman has ever been to him sends shooting pains through his vanity—and toothache and sciatica are mild compared with the torturings of a pain-shotten vanity.

Edna scored heavily in the newspapers. You would never have suspected it was her late husband’s money that had given her everything, that had made her throughout; for, what had she, and what was she, except a product of lavishly squandered money? Think about that carefully, gentle reader, before you damn me and commiserate her as in these pages a victim of my venomous malice.... She was the newspaper heroine of the hour. If she had been content with this— But I shall not anticipate.

My cable message from New York came at five o’clock. At half-past six, accompanied only by my valet, I was journeying toward Switzerland.

Mrs. Kirkwood, I had learned from her brother, was at Territet, at the Hotel Excelsior, with the Horace Armstrongs. At four the following afternoon I descended at Montreux from the Milan express; at five, with travel stains removed, I was in the garden of the Excelsior having tea with Mrs. Armstrong and listening to her raptures over the Savoy Alps. Doubtless you know Mrs. Armstrong’s (Neva Carlin’s) work. Her portrait of Edna is famous, is one of the best examples I know of inside-outness. Edna does not like it, perhaps for that reason.

Mary and Horace Armstrong had gone up to Caux. “But,” said Neva, “they’ll surely be back in a few minutes. Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt is coming at half-past five.”

I instantly recognized that name as the one Edna gave in telling me that Mary had gone shopping for a title and had invested. I had thought Edna’s jeer produced no effect upon me. I might have known better. My nature has, inevitably, been made morbidly suspicious by my business career. Also, I had found out Robert Armitage as a well-veneered snob, and this could not but have put me in an attitude of watchfulness toward his sister, so like him mentally. Also my investigations of that most important phenomenon of American life, the American woman, had compelled me to the conclusion that the disease of snobbishness had infected them all, with a few doubtful exceptions. So, without my realizing it, my mind was prepared to believe that Mary Kirkwood was like the rest. When Neva Armstrong pronounced the name Edna had given, there shot through me that horrible feeling of insufferable heat and insufferable cold which it would be useless to attempt to describe; for those who have felt it will understand at once, and those who have not could not be made to understand. And then I recalled Hartley Beechman’s jeer, “She’s laughing at us both.” But my voice was natural as I said:

“Tilzer-Borgfeldt. That’s the chap she’s engaged to just now, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Armstrong, who is a loyal friend, flushed angrily. “Mary isn’t that sort, and you know it, for you’ve known her a long time.”