What is determinable and more to our purpose is the subsequent process of dissolution, or petrifaction. All that need be said is that Margaret married her husband when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in him, and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible to many who marry. However foolishly she may have deluded herself,—betrayed a fatal incapacity to divine,—she believed when she went to the altar with Lawrence Pole that she was marrying a Man,—one whom she could respect as well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in mind and heart and soul.
She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a manner that had seemed to comrades at St. Mary's cold because of its reticence, there burned the fire of a crusading race,—of those Southerners who had pushed from the fat lowlands about the sea into the mountains and across them to the wilderness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had ridden his cavalry horse across the entire country in search of a new opening, to build at forty-three a new life for himself and his wife—after defeat! There was courage, aspiration, the power of deeds in that blood,—note the high forehead, the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there was also in her religious faith, received from her father the Bishop, piety, and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love to one's family and friends, and charity to the world. All this was untested, handed down to her wrapped in the prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of what we call the world, there in Washington among her mother's friends,—had been gay, perhaps reckless, played like a girl with love and life, those hours of sunshine. She knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were carnal; but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as well as body, without a spot from living, without a vicious nerve in her body, ready to learn.
And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn that heart to stone,—not that alone. The small segment of the world that knew the Poles might think so, hearing how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously left there his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, had lost what he could of his wife's property. To be sure, after that first "ill luck," Margaret's eyes had opened to the fact that her husband was not "practical," was easily led by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the Man's part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret had never expected to be rich,—had no ambition for place in the social race,—she would have gone back to her blue-capped mountains and lived there contented, "with something to look at." She had urged this course upon her husband after the first disaster; but he was too vain to "get out," to "quit the game," to leave New York. So with the understanding that henceforth he would stick to prosaic methods of money making, he had started again in his brokerage business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied with her babies. As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed itself, she had thought that child-bearing, child-having would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. Margaret Pole was one who "didn't mind having babies," and did not consider the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. She liked it all, she told Isabelle, and was completely happy only when the children were coming and while they were helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all.
Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came in, shaking in hand and heart, and the miserable news was soon out,—"caught in the panic," "unexpected turn of the market." But how could he be caught, his wife demanded, with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And after a little,—lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge being unwrapped,—it appeared,—the fact. He had "gone into cotton"—with whose money? His mother's estate,—those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty judge had put aside for his widow!
With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might have seen that the process of petrifaction had set in, had gone far, indeed.
Margaret loved her mother-in-law,—the sweet old woman of gentle fancies who lived in an old house in an old town on the Massachusetts coast, the town where she and the judge had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who had somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she knew what was missing in her woman's heart. No, the judge's widow should not pay for her son's folly! So Margaret sold the New York house, which was hers, and also some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, realizing bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing her boys' heritage—the gift of her forefathers—for a miserable tithe of its real value,—just because their father was too weak to hold what others had given him; and hadn't kept faith with her like a frank comrade…. What was left she took into her own possession.
So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and distress, in sickness and divorce, what else does an American do? Margaret had one lingering hope for her husband. He had a good voice. At college it was considered remarkable,—a clear, high tenor. He had done little with his gift except make social capital out of it. And he had some aptitude for acting. He had been a four years' star in the college operas. If the judge had not belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted finance—and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to herself, over there, away from trivial society,—the bungled business career ended,—Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only thirty-two,—not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he should do. And then she beguiled herself with the hope that some of that intellectual life, the interests in books, music, art—in ideas—could come to them in common,—a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life might be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband's nature, with few illusions, but with tolerance and hope, Margaret betook herself to Munich and settled her family in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to their income,—her income, which was all they had. But it mattered not what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to make a little answer….
At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his vanity, and offered an easy solution for his catastrophe in cotton. He was the artist, not fitted for business, as his wife saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and take lessons,—but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. Then Larry was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he found some idle American students, and ran about with them, and through them he fell in with a woman of the Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every agreeable European centre. When Margaret emerged from her retirement and began to look about, she found this Englishwoman very prominent on the horizon. Larry sang with her and drove with her and did the other things that he could not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the nine months of his wife's disability socially irksome, and amuses himself more or less innocently.
Margaret understood. Whether Larry's fondness for Mrs. Demarest was innocent or not, she did not care; she was surprised with herself to find that she had no jealousy whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. This Mrs. Conry had a husband who came to Munich after her and bore her back to London. When Larry proposed that they should spend the next season in London, his wife said calmly:—
"You may if you like. I am going to return to America."