Chains

by Theodore Dreiser

How could she go on? (She paused in her thoughts to survey and follow her maid, who was calling for the second time.) Though he hung upon her least word or wish and was content to see her at her pleasure, to run her errands and be ever deferential and worshipful, still she could not like him, could barely tolerate him. Before her always now was Vivian with his brooding eyes and elusive, sensitive smile; Vivian, who had never a penny to bless himself with. She could see him now striding to and fro in his bare studio, a brush in one hand, or sitting in his crippled chair meditating before a picture or talking to her of ways and means which might be employed to better their state. The pathos!

“I cannot endure that perfume, Olga!”

In part she could understand her acceptance of Harry after Vivian (only it did not seem understandable always, even to her), for in her extreme youth her parents had been so very poor. Perhaps because of her longings and childish fears in those days she had been marked in some strange way that had eventually led her to the conviction that wealth was so essential. For her parents were certainly harassed from her sixth to her thirteenth years, when they recovered themselves in part. Some bank or concern had failed and they had been thrown on inadequate resources and made to shift along in strange ways. She could remember an old brick house with a funereal air and a weedy garden into which they had moved and where for a long time they were almost without food. Her mother had cried more than once as she sat by the open window looking desolately out, while Ulrica, not quite comprehending what it was all about, had stared at her from an adjacent corner.

“Will madame have the iris or the Japanese lilac in the water?”

She recalled going downtown once on an errand and slipping along shyly because her clothes were not good. And when she saw some schoolgirls approaching, hid behind a tree so they should not see her. Another time, passing the Pilkington at dinner-time, the windows being open and the diners visible, she had wondered what great persons they must be to be able to bask in so great a world. It was then perhaps that she had developed the obsession for wealth which had led to this. If only she could have seen herself as she now was she would not have longed so. (She paused, looking gloomily back into the past.) And then had come the recovery of her father in some way or other. He had managed to get an interest in a small stove factory and they were no longer so poor—but that was after her youth had been spoiled, her mind marked in this way.

And to crown it all, at seventeen had come Byram the inefficient. And because he was “cute” and had a suggestion of a lisp; was of good family and really insane over her, as nearly every youth was once she had turned fourteen, she had married him, against her parents’ wishes, running away with him and lying about her age, as did he about his. And then had come trying times. Byram was no money-maker, as she might have known. He was inexperienced, and being in disfavor with his parents for ignoring them in his hasty choice of a wife, he was left to his own devices. For two whole years what had she not endured—petty wants which she had concealed from her mother, furniture bought on time and dunned for, collectors with whom she had to plead not to take the stove or the lamp or the parlor table, and grocery stores and laundries and meat-markets which had to be avoided because of unpaid bills. There had even been an ejectment for non-payment of rent, and job after job lost for one reason and another, until the whole experiment had been discolored and made impossible even after comfort had been restored.

“I cannot endure the cries of the children, Olga. You will have to close that window.”

No; Byram was no money-maker, not even after his parents in far-distant St. Paul had begun to help him to do better. And anyhow by then, because she had had time to sense how weak he was, what a child, she was weary of him, although he was not entirely to blame. It was life. And besides, during all that time there had been the most urgent pursuit of her by other men, men of the world and of means, who had tried to influence her with the thought of how easily her life could be made more agreeable. Why remain faithful to so young and poor a man when so much could be done for her. But she had refused. Despite Byram’s lacks she had small interest in them, although their money and skill had succeeded in debasing Byram in her young and untrained imagination, making him seem even weaker and more ridiculous than he was. But that was all so long ago now and Vivian had proved so much more important in her life. While even now she was sorry for Harry and for Byram she could only think of Vivian, who was irretrievably gone. Byram was successful now and out of her life, but maybe if life had not been so unkind and they so foolish——

“You may have Henry serve breakfast and call the car!”

And then after Byram had come Newton, big, successful, important, a quondam employer of Byram, who had met her on the street one day when she was looking for work, just when she had begun to sense how inefficient Byram really was, and he had proved kind without becoming obnoxious or demanding. While declaring, and actually proving, that he wished nothing more of her than her good-will, he had aided her with work, an opportunity to make her own way. All men were not selfish. He had been the vice-president of the Dickerson Company and had made a place for her in his office, saying that what she did not know he would teach her since he needed a little sunshine there. And all the while her interest in Byram was waning, so much so that she had persuaded him to seek work elsewhere so that she might be rid of him, and then she had gone home to live with her mother. And Newton would have married her if she had cared, but so grieved was she by the outcome of her first love and marriage that she would not.