“Gay Stories”! What a name for a magazine! And that stout old traveling man reading it!
What a strange thing it was to be a girl like that—with passions and illusions like that! Perhaps, after all, life only came to those who sought it with great strength and natural gifts. But how hard it was on those who hadn’t anything of that kind! Nevertheless, people should get over the follies of their youth—Idelle should, anyhow. She had had enough, goodness knows. She had been one of the worst—hectic, vastly excited about life, irresponsible—and she should have sobered by now. Why not? Look at all he had to offer her! Was that not enough to effect a change? While it made her interesting at times, this left-over enthusiasm, still it was so ridiculous, and made her non-desirable, too, either as wife or mother. Yet no doubt that was what had made her so fascinating to him, too, at this late day and to all those other men in B—— and elsewhere—that blazing youthfulness. Strange as it might seem, he could condone Idelle’s dreadful deeds even now, just as her mother could, if she would only behave herself, if she would only love him and him alone—but would she? She seemed so determined to bend everything to her service, regardless,—to yield nothing to him.
No use! He couldn’t stand these traveling men in this smoking room! He must have the porter make up his berth!
And then had come Coulstone, the one who was still hanging about her now, the one with whom she had had that dreadful affair in Pittsburgh, the affair that always depressed him to think about even now. Of course, there was one thing to be said in extenuation of that, if you could say anything at all—which you couldn’t really—and that was that Idelle was no longer a good girl then, but experienced and with all her blazing disposition aroused. She had captured the reins of her life then and was doing as she pleased—only why couldn’t he have met her then instead of Coulstone? He was alive then. And his own life had always been so empty. When she had confessed so much of all this to him afterward—not this Coulstone affair exactly, but the other things—why hadn’t he left her then? He might have and saved himself all this agony—or could he have then? He was twice her age when he married her and knew better, only he thought he could reform her—or did he? Was that the true reason? Could he admit the true reason to himself?
“Yes, make it up right away, if you will!” Now he would have to wait about and be bored!
But to come back to the story of Coulstone and all that hectic life in Pittsburgh. Coulstone, it seems, had been one of four or five very wealthy young managing vice-presidents of the Iverson-Centelever Frog and Switch Company, of Pittsburgh. And Idelle, because her father had suddenly died after her affair with young Gratiot, never knowing a thing about it, and her mother, not knowing quite what to do with her, had (because Idelle seemed to wish it) sent her to stay with an aunt in Pittsburgh. But the aunt having to leave for a time shortly after Idelle reached there, a girl friend had, at Idelle’s instigation, apparently, suggested that she stay with her until the aunt’s return, and Idelle had then persuaded her mother to agree to that.
That tall, lanky girl having to sleep in that upper berth opposite! European sleeping cars were so much better!
Her girl friend was evidently something like Idelle, or even worse. At any rate, Idelle appeared to have been able to wind her around her finger. For through her she had found some method of being introduced to (or letting them introduce themselves) a few of these smart new-rich men of the town, among them two of these same vice-presidents, one of whom was Coulstone. According to Idelle, he was a lavish and even reckless spender, wanting it to appear generally that he could do anything and have anything that money could buy, and liking to be seen in as many as a dozen public places in one afternoon or evening, especially at week-ends, only there weren’t so many in Pittsburgh at the time.
This must be Centerfield, the state capital of E——, they were now passing without a pause! These expresses cut through so many large cities!
From the first, so Idelle said, he had made violent love to her, though he was already married (unhappily, of course), and she, caring nothing for the conventions and not being of the kind that obeys any laws (wilful, passionate, reckless), had received him probably in exactly the spirit in which he approached her, if not more so. That was the worst of her, her constant, wilful, pagan pursuit of pleasure, regardless of anybody or anything, and it still held her in spite of him. There was something revolting about the sheer animality of it, that rushing together of two people, regardless. Still, if it had been himself and Idelle now—