"Stanny was like that. He wanted to write stories. They are pretty good stories, too, but you know there"s not much sale for the merely good thing. And unsuccessful art of any kind is hardly worth while, is it?... When we were first married, he had an idea of going away somewhere and living on nothing at all until he had made a name. But that is not the way things are done, is it?"
She paused to laugh sympathetically and look at Milly, as if she must understand what foolish creatures men often were and how wives like Milly and herself had to save them from their follies.
"Of course," she continued, "if he had had Reinhard"s luck, it would have been another thing. Clive Reinhard"s stuff is just rot, of course, but people like it and he gets all kinds of prices."
She took a cigarette and throwing herself comfortably on a divan blew a silvery wreath upwards. Meditatively she summed up the philosophy she held,--
"It"s better to stay with the game and make the most you can out of it, don"t you think so?"
Milly agreed.
"And _Bunker"s_ is a very good game, if you haven"t any money."
Milly admired her new friend"s cleverness. She was the kind who knew how to manage life,--her own life especially,--and get what she wanted out of the game. Milly began to have great respect for that sort of women and wished she were more like them. She felt that Hazel Fredericks never did things waywardly: she always had a well-calculated purpose hidden in her mind, just as she had a carefully conceived picture of herself that she desired to leave upon the minds of others. If Mrs. Billman had put her husband where he was in _Bunker"s_ by force, as her rival hinted, Mrs. Fredericks had also engineered "Stanny"s" career with skilful strategy.
Just at present she was involved in a project for a cooperative apartment building, which some people she knew were to put up in a desirable neighborhood. She quite fired Milly with the desire to buy s.p.a.ce in the building.
"It"s really the only way you can live in New York, if you haven"t money," Mrs. Fredericks said convincingly, displaying the plan of their tiny apartment. "Of course we can"t have children--there"s no room for them--but Stanny is so delicate I shouldn"t feel it was right to have them, anyway."
She spoke as if it were a sacrifice she had deliberately made for her husband....
Milly talked enthusiastically to Jack that night of the new cooperative building and urged him to look into it. "I do so want a home of my own,"
she said with a touch of pathos. "Mrs. Fredericks still thinks there"s s.p.a.ce to be had on one of the floors."
Bragdon looked into it, and reported that a good deal of s.p.a.ce was to be had. He was dubious of the wisdom of the scheme, even if by a complicated arrangement of loans they could manage to buy a nominal share. But Milly was persistent and proved to him with a sudden command of figures that it would really reduce the cost of rent. She found out more details, and she gained the support of Big Brother, who generously offered to finance the undertaking for them. "It will make you feel settled," he said, "to own your own home." Jack could not see that in the end he should own much of anything unless by some surprising stroke of luck a good many thousands of dollars fell into his lap. But he felt that Milly should have a permanent place of her own, such as the slice of the new ten-story building offered, and it would be better for the child than to be wandering from rented apartment to apartment. So the plans were drawn, the agreements practically made, when he had a final misgiving.
The agreements lay on the table before him to be signed, and he had just read them over carefully. They seemed to him like a chain that, once signed, bound him to the city, to _Bunker"s_ for an indefinite future.
His editorial chair had been specially galling that day, perhaps, or the impulse to paint stronger than usual. He threw down the papers and exclaimed,--
"Let"s quit, Milly, before it"s too late!"
"What do you mean?"
And he made his plea, for the last time seriously, to take their lives in their hands and like brave people walk out of the city-maze to freedom, to a simple, rational life without pretence.
"I want to cut out all this!" he cried with pa.s.sion, waving his hand carelessly over the huddle of city roofs, "get into some quiet spot and paint, paint, paint! until I make "em see that I have something to say.
It"s the only way to do things!"
With pa.s.sionate vividness he saw the years of his youth and desire slipping away in the round of trivial "jobs" in the city; he saw the slow decay of resolves under the ever increasing demands to "make good"
by earning money. And he shrank from it as from the pit.
"I don"t see why you say that," Milly replied. "Most painters live in the city part of the year. There"s ---- and ----"
She argued the matter with him long into the night, obstinately refusing to see the fatality of the choice they were making.
"We can get rid of the apartment any time, if we don"t want it," she said, and quoted Hazel Fredericks.
They came nearer to seeing into each other"s souls that night than ever before or ever again. They saw that their inmost interests were antagonistic and must always remain so for all the active, creative years of their lives, and the best they could do, for the sake of their dead ideals, much more for the sake of the living child, was decently to compromise between their respective egotisms and thus "live and let live."
"If I had married a plain business man," Milly let fall in the heat of the argument, revealing in that phrase the knowledge she had arrived at of her mistake, "it would have been different."
Bragdon was not sure of that, but he was sure that in so far as he could he must supply for her the things that "plain business man" could have given her. Or they must part--they even looked into that gulf, from which both shrank back. At the end Milly said:--
"If you don"t think it"s best, don"t do it. You must do what you think is best for your career."
Such was her present ideal of wifely submission to husband in all matters that concerned his "career," but she let him plainly perceive that in saying this she was merely putting the responsibility of their lives wholly upon his shoulders, as he was the breadwinner.
With an impatient gesture, Bragdon drew the agreements towards him and signed them.
"There!" he said, with a somewhat bitter laugh, "nothing in life is worth so much talk."
Afterwards Milly reminded him that he had made this choice himself of his own free will: he could not reproach her for their having bought a slice in the East River Terrace Building.
III
MORE OF "BUNKER"S"
One of the notable incidents of this period was the visit they made to the Bunker"s place on Long Island. It was in the autumn after Bragdon had been on the magazine staff for some months. Milly went out in the train with Hazel Fredericks, who took this occasion to air her views of the Bunkers and the Billmans more fully than she had before. She described the magazine proprietor and his wife in a succinct sentence,--
"They"re second-cla.s.s New York: everything the others have but the right crowd--you"ll see."
Howard Bunker, she admitted, was likable,--a jolly, unpretentious, shrewd business man, with a hearty American appet.i.te for the bustle of existence. As for the handsome Mrs. Bunker,--"She was from Waterbury, Connecticut, you know," she said, a.s.suming that Milly, who had heard of the Connecticut town solely as a place where a popular cheap watch was manufactured, would understand the depth of social inferiority Mrs.
Howard Bunker"s origin implied. "She"s too lazy to be really ambitious.
They have a box at the Opera, but that means nothing these days. She"s kind, if you don"t put her to any trouble, and they have awfully good food.... It"s a bore coming out to their place, but you have to, once in so often, you understand. You sit around and eat and look over the stables and the garden and all that sort of thing."
She further explained that probably Grace Billman was motoring out with their host. "She always manages that: she regards him as her property, you know." It would be a "shop party," she expected. "That"s all the social imagination these people have: they get us together by groups--we"re the magazine group. Possibly she"ll have Clive Reinhard.
He"s different, though, because he"s made a name for himself, so that all sorts of people run after him."
Mrs. Bunker met the young women at the station, driving her own ponies.
Milly recognized the type at a glance, as much from her Chicago experience as from Mrs. Fredericks" description. Mrs. Bunker was a largish, violent blonde, with a plethora of everything about her,--hair and blood and flesh. She was cordial in her greeting to the editors"
wives. She apparently regarded the magazine as one of her husband"s fads,--an incident of his wealth,--like a shooting-box or a racing stable or a philanthropy. It gave prestige.
"I"ve got Clive Reinhard," she announced, as they started from the station, a note of triumph in her languid voice. "My, but he"s popular.
I"ve tried to get him for a month. This time I had him on the telephone, and I said "I won"t let you go--simply won"t ring off until you promise.
I"ll tell Howard to turn down your next book.""
She laughed at her own wit. Hazel Fredericks glanced at Milly with a look of intelligence. Milly was much amused by the good lady and listened appreciatively to her petty conversation....
It was all just as Mrs. Fredericks had predicted. Their host arrived shortly in his car with Mrs. Montgomery Billman, who cast a scornful glance at the "shop party," nodded condescendingly at Milly, kissed Hazel on the tip of her nose, and retired to her room. The men came along later, in time for dinner, all except the popular novelist, who was motored over from another house party the next morning. Dinner was long and dull. The Responsible Editress absorbed the host for the most part. What little general talk there was turned on the magazine, especially on the noise it was making with a series of "exposure"
articles on the "Crimes of Big Business." Milly could not understand how Mr. Bunker, who seemed to have prospered under the rule of Big Business, could permit such articles in his magazine. But Reinhard explained to her the next day that Radicalism was the "new note." "You have to be progressive and reform and all that to break into notice," he said.
After dinner there was a little music, some bridge, more talk; then the women yawningly went to bed, while the men stayed up for another cigar and further shop talk. The next day was also much as Hazel Fredericks had said it would be. It was hot, and after the very late and copious breakfast everybody was languid. Milly was much interested in being shown over the place by her hostess. She admired the gardens, the hothouses, the planting, the stables, and all the other appurtenances of a modern country estate. Later she had a brief tete-a-tete with Bunker, who had been prejudiced against her by Mrs. Billman and was bored by her too evident flattery. She had also a talk with Clive Reinhard, with whom she discussed his last story and his "ideas about women." For the rest it was a torpid and sensual Sunday with much to eat and drink,--very much like the Sunday of some thousands of rich Americans all over the land. Most of the guests returned to the city on an evening train, bored and unconsciously glad to get back into their respective ruts.