“Even if they are true to life,” he said, “I don’t see why it’s necessary to drag in unpleasant subjects. I tell you a fella gets too much of bad things in this world without reading about’em in books. Trouble with all these ‘realists’ as you call’em, is that they’re such dirty-minded hounds themselves that all they can see in life is the bad side.”
Una surmised that the writers of such novels might, perhaps, desire to show the bad side in the hope that life might be made more beautiful. But she wasn’t quite sure of it, and she suffered herself to be overborne, when he snorted: “Nonsense! These fellas are just trying to show how sensational they can be, t’ say nothing of talking like they was so damn superior to the rest of us. Don’t read’em. Read pure authors like Howard Bancock Binch, where, whenever any lady gets seduced or anything like that, the author shows it’s because the villain is an atheist or something, and he treats all those things in a nice, fine, decent manner. Good Gawd! sometimes a fella’d think, to see you scrooge up your nose when I’m shaving, that I’m common as dirt, but lemme tell you, right now, miss, I’m a darn sight too refined to read any of these nasty novels where they go to the trouble of describing homes that ain’t any better than pig-pens. Oh, and another thing! I heard you telling Mrs. Sanderson you thought all kids oughta have sex education. My Gawd! I don’t know where you get those rotten ideas! Certainly not from me. Lemme tell you, no kid of mine is going to be made nasty-minded by having a lot of stuff like that taught her. Yes, sir, actually taught her right out in school.”
Una was sufficiently desirous of avoiding contention to keep to novels which portrayed life—offices and family hotels and perspiratory husbands—as all for the best. But now and then she doubted, and looked up from the pile of her husband’s white-footed black-cotton socks to question whether life need be confined to Panama and Pemberton and Schwirtz.
In deference to Mr. Schwirtz’s demands on the novelists, one could scarce even suggest the most dreadful scene in Una’s life, lest it be supposed that other women really are subject to such horror, or that the statistics regarding immoral diseases really mean anything in households such as we ourselves know.... She had reason to suppose that her husband was damaged goods. She crept to an old family doctor and had a fainting joy to find that she had escaped contamination.
“Though,” said the doctor, “I doubt if it would be wise to have a child of his.”
“I won’t!” she said, grimly.
She knew the ways of not having children. The practical Mr. Schwirtz had seen to that. Strangely enough, he did not object to birth-control, even though it was discussed by just the sort of people who wrote these sensational realistic novels.
There were periods of reaction when she blamed herself for having become so set in antipathy that she always looked for faults; saw as a fault even the love for amusements which had once seemed a virtue in him.
She tried, wistfully and honestly, to be just. She reminded herself constantly that she had enjoyed some of the parties with him—theater and a late supper, with a couple just back from South America.
But—there were so many “buts”! Life was all one obliterating But.