The Husband's Story: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

“Oh, well enough,” said she indifferently. “I hardly noticed him—or the other men. I had my game to play. The men don’t count in the social game. It’s the women. I shall be nervous until I find out whether I really got them. They are such cats!—so mean and sly and jealous. I detest women!”

“I prefer men, myself,” said I.

“Men!” She laughed scornfully. “I think men are intolerable—American men. They say foreigners are better. But American men—they know nothing but dull business or politics. They have no breadth—no idealism. The women are far superior to the men.”

I laughed. “No doubt you women are too good for us,” said I carelessly. “We’re grateful that you don’t scorn us too much even to accept our money.”

“How coarse that is! Don’t spoil the happiest evening of my life.”

We were at home, so she could escape from me. And I, for my part, was as glad to be quit of her society as she could possibly have been to get rid of me. I was beginning to realize that her conversation bored me, that it had always bored me, that it was her sex and only her sex that interested me. And latterly even this had lost its charm. Why?

I have observed—and perhaps you have observed it, too—that people of wealth and position, unless they have very striking individuality indeed, are usually utterly devoid of charm. It is difficult to become interested in them, to establish any sort of sympathetic current. And you will notice that fashionable functions are dull, essentially dull; that the animation is artificial, is supplied from without by an orchestra or entertainers, and fails to infect the company. It was long before I discovered the explanation for this. I at first thought it was the stupidity that comes from a surfeit of the luxuries and pleasures. But I am now convinced that this familiar explanation is not the true one; that the true one is the excessive, the really preposterous self-centeredness of people of rank and wealth. From waking until sleeping they are surrounded by hirelings and sycophants who think and talk only of them. Thus the rich man or woman gets into the habit of concentrating upon self. Now the essence of charm is giving—giving oneself out in sympathetic interest in one’s fellows. How can people, all whose faculties are trained to work in upon themselves—how can they have charm? An egotist, one who talks only of himself, may have charm because he gives you the impression that he is trying to please you, that he thinks you so important that he wishes you to be sensible of his importance. But the egotist who, whatever he talks, thinks only of himself—he is not only dull and bored but also a diffuser of dullness and boredom. And that is how their servants and their sycophants make the rich and the fashionable so dreary.

I imagine some such effect as this was being produced upon my wife by her surroundings of luxury. I think that may account for her long decreasing charm for me. At any rate, soon after she was well launched on her Elysian sea of fashion—that is to say, soon after she ceased to have any check of social seeking to restrain her from centering all her thoughts and actions upon herself, she lost the last bit of her charm for me. She became radiantly beautiful. Her face took on a serene and refinedly assured expression that made her extravagantly admired on every hand. She became gracious to me and almost as sweet as she had been before we moved to New York. She even let me see that, if I so desired, she would condescend to be on terms of wifely affection with me again. But I did not so desire. I liked her. I admired her energy, her toilets, and, quite impersonally, her aristocratic beauty. But I was content to be a bachelor, and I was grateful when she began to relieve me of the tediousness of going about in her train.

My substitute was an architect, Leon MacIlvane by name—a handsome young fellow of about my wife’s age, though he thought her much younger, despite Margot’s age and appearance. With his poetic dark eyes and classic features, and rich, deep voice, MacIlvane had long been a favorite with the young married women of the Armitage set. He was indeed a valuable asset. The rich unmarried men were not especially interesting; also, they were needed by the marriageable girls. MacIlvane, not a marrying man and never making any mother uneasy by so much as an interested glance at a daughter intended for a rich husband, devoted himself to married women.

“I do not care for girls,” he said to me. “They are too colorless.”