CHAPTER XXIII
Isabelle did not see much of the Falkners as time went on. Little lines of social divergence began to separate them more and more widely. "After all, one sees chiefly the people who do the same things one does," Isabelle explained to herself. Bessie thought Isabelle "uncertain," perhaps snobbish, and felt hurt; though she remarked to Rob merely, "The Lanes are very successful, of course."
Affairs in the Buena Vista Pleasance house had progressed meantime. There were, naturally, so many meals to be got and eaten, so many little illnesses of the children, and other roughnesses of the road of life. There was also Bessie's developing social talent, and above all there was the infinitely complex action and reaction of the man and the wife upon each other. Seen as an all-seeing eye might observe, with all the emotional shading, the perspective of each act, the most commonplace household created by man and woman would be a wonderful cosmography. But the novelist, even he who has the courage to write a dull book, can touch but here and there, on the little promontories of daily life, where it seems to him the spiritual lava boils up near the surface and betrays most poignantly the nature of the fire beneath….
It was a little over three years since the Falkners had moved into the Buena Vista Pleasance house. Husband and wife sat in the front room after their silent dinner alone, with the September breeze playing through the windows, which after a hot day had been thrown open. There was the debris of a children's party in the room and the hall,—dolls and toys, half-nibbled cakes and saucers of ice-cream. Bessie, who was very neat about herself, was quite Southern in her disregard for order. She was also an adorable hostess for children, because she gave them loose rein.
"What is it you wish to say?" she asked her husband in a cold, defensive tone that had grown almost habitual.
Though pale she was looking very pretty in a new dress that she had worn at a woman's luncheon, where she had spent the first part of the afternoon. She had been much admired at the luncheon, had taken the lead in the talk about a new novel which was making a ten days' sensation. Her mind was still occupied partly with what she had said about the book. These discussions with Rob on household matters, at increasingly frequent periods, always froze her. "He makes me show my worst side," she said to herself. At the children's tea, moreover, an attack of indigestion had developed. Bessie was fond of rich food, and in her nervous condition, which was almost chronic, it did not agree with her, and made her irritable.
"I have been going over our affairs," Falkner began in measured tones. That was the usual formula! Bessie thought he understood women very badly. She wondered if he ever did anything else those evenings he spent at home except "go over their affairs." She wished he would devote himself to some more profitable occupation.
"Well?"
Falkner looked tired and listless. The summer was always his hardest time, and this summer the road had been pushing its terminal work with actual ferocity. He wore glasses now, and was perceptibly bald. He was also slouchy about dress; Bessie could rarely induce him to put on evening clothes when they dined alone.
"Well?" she asked again. It was not polite of him to sit staring there as if his mind were a thousand miles away. A husband should show some good manners to a woman, even if she was his wife!