“Yes, that’s whut he is, I do b’lieve,” added Mrs. Queeder with a modicum of wifely interest, yet more concerned at that with her part of the money than anything else.
Then Dode, his mother and sister began most unconcernedly to speculate as to what if anything was next to be done with the old farmer, the while the latter rolled a vacant eye over a scene he was no longer able to interpret.
X
MARRIAGE—FOR ONE
Whenever I think of love and marriage I think of Wray. That clerkly figure. That clerkly mind. He was among the first people I met when I came to New York and, like so many of the millions seeking to make their way, he was busy about his affairs. Fortunately, as I saw it, with the limitations of the average man he had the ambitions of the average man. At that time he was connected with one of those large commercial agencies which inquire into the standing of business men, small and large, and report their findings, for a price, to other business men. He was very much interested in his work and seemed satisfied that should he persist in it he was certain to achieve what was perhaps a fair enough ambition: a managership in some branch of this great concern, which same would pay him so much as five or six thousand a year. The thing about him that interested me, apart from a genial and pleasing disposition, was the fact that with all his wealth of opportunity before him for studying the human mind, its resources and resourcefulness, its inhibitions and liberations, its humor, tragedy, and general shiftiness and changefulness, still he was largely concerned with the bare facts of the differing enterprises whose character he was supposed to investigate. Were they solvent? Could and did they pay their bills? What was their capital stock? How much cash did they have on hand?... Such was the nature of the data he needed, and to this he largely confined himself.
Nevertheless, by turns he was amused or astonished or made angry or self-righteous by the tricks, the secretiveness, the errors and the downright meanness of spirit of so many he had to deal with. As for himself, he had the feeling that he was honest, straightforward, not as limited or worthless as some of these others, and it was on this score that he was convinced he would succeed, as he did eventually, within his limitations, of course. What interested me and now makes me look upon him always as an excellent illustration of the futility of the dream of exact or even suitable rewards was his clerkly and highly respectable faith in the same. If a man did as he should do, if he were industrious and honest and saving and courteous and a few more of those many things we all know we ought to be, then in that orderly nature of things which he assumed to hold one must get along better than some others. What—an honest, industrious, careful man not do better than one who was none of these things—a person who flagrantly disregarded them, say? What nonsense. It must be so. Of course there were accidents and sickness, and men stole from one another, as he saw illustrated in his daily round. And banks failed, and there were trusts and combinations being formed that did not seem to be entirely in tune with the interests of the average man. But even so, all things considered, the average man, if he did as above, was likely to fare much better than the one who did not. In short, there was such a thing as approximate justice. Good did prevail, in the main, and the wicked were punished, as they should be.
And in the matter of love and marriage he held definite views also. Not that he was unduly narrow or was inclined to censure those whose lives had not worked out as well as he hoped his own would, but he thought there was a fine line of tact somewhere in this matter of marriage which led to success there quite as the qualities outlined above led, or should lead, to success in matters more material or practical. One had to understand something about women. One had to be sure that when one went a-courting one selected a woman of sense as well as of charm, one who came of good stock and hence would be possessed of good taste and good principles. She need not be rich; she might even be poor. And one had to be reasonably sure that one loved her. So many that went a-courting imagined they loved and were loved when it was nothing more than a silly passing passion. Wray knew. And so many women were designing, or at least light and flighty; they could not help a serious man to succeed if they would. However, in many out-of-the-way corners of the world were the really sensible and worthy girls, whom it was an honor to marry, and it was one of these that he was going to choose. Yet even there it was necessary to exercise care: one might marry a girl who was too narrow and conventional, one who would not understand the world and hence be full of prejudices. He was for the intelligent and practical and liberal girl, if he could find her, one who was his mental equal.
It was when he had become secretary to a certain somebody that he encountered in his office a girl who seemed to him to embody nearly all of the virtues or qualities which he thought necessary. She was the daughter of very modestly circumstanced parents who dwelt in the nearby suburb of O——, and a very capable and faithful stenographer, of course. If you had seen the small and respectable suburb from which she emanated you would understand. She was really pretty and appeared to be practical and sensible in many ways, but still very much in leash to the instructions and orders and tenets of her home and her church and her family circle, three worlds as fixed and definite and worthy and respectable in her thought as even the most enthusiastic of those who seek to maintain the order and virtue of the world would have wished. According to him, as he soon informed me—since we exchanged nearly all our affairs whenever we met, she was opposed to the theatre, dancing, any form of night dining or visiting in the city on weekdays, as well as anything that in her religious and home world might be construed as desecration of the Sabbath. I recall him describing her as narrow “as yet,” but he hoped to make her more liberal in the course of time. He also told me with some amusement and the air of a man of the world that it was impossible for him to win her to so simple an outing as rowing on the Sabbath on the little river near her home because it was wrong; on the contrary, he had to go to church with her and her parents. Although he belonged to no church and was mildly interested in socialism, he kept these facts from her knowledge. The theatre could not even be mentioned as a form of amusement and she could not and would not dance; she looked upon his inclination for the same as not only worldly but loose and sinful. However, as he told me, he was very fond of her and was doing his best to influence and enlighten her. She was too fine and intelligent a girl to stick to such notions. She would come out of them.
By very slow degrees (he was about his business of courting her all of two or three years) he succeeded in bringing her to the place where she did not object to staying downtown to dinner with him on a weekday, even went with him to a sacred or musical concert of a Sunday night, but all unbeknown to her parents or neighbors, of course. But what he considered his greatest triumph was when he succeeded in interesting her in books, especially bits of history and philosophy that he thought very liberal and which no doubt generated some thin wisps of doubt in her own mind. Also, because he was intensely fond of the theatre and had always looked upon it as the chiefest of the sources of his harmless entertainment, he eventually induced her to attend one performance, and then another and another. In short, he emancipated her in so far as he could, and seemed to be delighted with the result.
With their marriage came a new form of life for both of them, but more especially for her. They took a small apartment in New York, a city upon which originally she had looked with no little suspicion, and they began to pick up various friends. It was not long before she had joined a literary club which was being formed in their vicinity, and here she met a certain type of restless, pushing, seeking woman for whom Wray did not care—a Mrs. Drake and a Mrs. Munshaw, among others, who, from the first, as he afterward told me, he knew could be of no possible value to any one. But Bessie liked them and was about with them here, there, and everywhere.
It was about this time that I had my first suspicion of anything untoward in their hitherto happy relations. I did not see him often now, but when I did visit them at their small apartment, could not help seeing that Mrs. Wray was proving almost too apt a pupil in the realm in which he had interested her. It was plain that she had been emancipated from quite all of her old notions as to the sinfulness of the stage, and in regard to reading and living in general. Plainly, Wray had proved the Prince Charming, who had entered the secret garden and waked the sleeping princess to a world of things she had never dreamed of. She had reached the place where she was criticizing certain popular authors, spoke of a curiously enlightened history of France she was reading, of certain bits of philosophy and poetry which her new club were discussing. From the nature of the conversation being carried on by the three of us I could see that Wray was beginning to feel that the unsophisticated young girl he had married a little while before might yet outstrip him in the very realm in which he had hoped to be her permanent guide. More than once, as I noticed, she chose to question or contradict him as to a matter of fact, and I think he was astonished if not irritated by the fact that she knew more than he about the import of a certain plot or the relativity of certain dates in history. And with the force and determination that had caused her to stand by her former convictions, she now aired and defended her new knowledge. Not that her manner was superior or irritating exactly; she had a friendly way of including and consulting him in regard to many things which indicated that as yet she had no thought of manifesting a superiority which she did not feel. “That’s not right, dearest. His name is Bentley. He is the author of a play that was here last year—The Seven Rings of Manfred—don’t you remember?” And Wray, much against his will, was compelled to confess that she was right.