The next day George Cutter’s spirits had revived and with them a certain hope. He resolved to have it out with Helen. She was not reasonable. Few women were, but he knew that she loved him. He might count on that. In the evening after dinner they sat before the fire in the parlor. Helen wore a dark dress, plain, durable, unbecoming. He considered this dress, the woman in it, with a coolly impartial eye. His heart failed him. He doubted if she could pull it off if she would. If, for example, she could be made to realize the importance of dressing handsomely and extravagantly every day. If she could be induced to live the life she would have to live. He admitted it was a sort of puppet existence. But as necessary to his success as the dummies in a shop window are to advertise the owner’s trade. Ten thousand women did it all the time, liked it. Still Helen was not one of them. She was removed by nature, every instinct, from that class. He was half a mind to give up the whole thing. At this moment, Helen[145] looked across at him. There was a hint of tears in her eyes, a fugitive smile on her lips as if this smile pleaded with him for a certain forgiveness.
He laughed. He stood up and took her in his arms.
“Am I all right now, George?” she asked, as if she had been shriven by this embrace.
“Absolutely,” he assured her.
They sat down. Helen sighed, being now full of that sad peace which makes sighs.
“The trouble with you is, dear, that you are never wrong. That cuts you out of life. We who are in the thick of it must be a little wrong,” he explained.
“I suppose so,” she agreed.
“Not so rigid. We can’t be,” he said.
She agreed to that also.
“If you could be a little less perfect, it would help me a lot.”
She smiled, implying that in that case she was in a position to help him. But what could she do? She had often felt how little service she was.
Her meekness intrigued him. “How would you like to live in New York?” he asked.
“I would not like it,” she answered after a pause.
He might have known what her answer would[146] be, Cutter reflected bitterly. His face reddened. His anger was rising.
“Why? Do you want to live there?” she asked, feeling this silence directed against her.
“Oh, it makes no difference what I want, because if we lived on separate planets you could not differ more widely than you do from my way of life and my desires, my very needs,” he exclaimed.
This was unjust, she knew. Still she felt guilty.
“George, I can’t pretend that I should like to live in New York, but if you want to go there, I will go. I must not stand ever in the way of your success.”
He sat in brooding, bitter silence, staring into the fire.
“We might live very quietly; at least I could, couldn’t I?” she asked timidly, ready to make every other concession.
“No; you could not. You’d have to play the game as other women do. You would not do that. You—your whole mind is against the idea—you would not adjust yourself. You would not even try to adjust yourself to the world as it is. You want to make one yourself, six hundred feet long and seven hundred feet wide with this house[147] in the middle of it. You have done it. Look at it,” he exclaimed, with a glance that swept this room like a conflagration.
This was the first time she had suspected that the parlor was not furnished according to his liking. She was that simple, and he had been that patient.
“You have created a place to live in where nobody can live except as you do,” he went on.
He took no notice of the fact that she sat with one hand on her breast, staring at him with a look of mortal pain.
“Well, I will be more considerate of you than you can be of me, Helen,” he began again. “We will drop the idea of going to New York. You like this place. I might be contented here myself, if I had nothing to do except keep it. But I have my business, a man’s name and reputation to make. I will stay here when my affairs don’t require me to be somewhere else. You understand,” giving her an eye thrust.
“Yes,” she answered, meeting this thrust steadily. She was dying to her happiness, not without reproach, but without fear.
He crossed his legs and swung his foot after this deed. He did not tell her that Shippen had offered him a partnership in a big business the[148] night before. In view of her unreasonable prejudice against Shippen, this information would only have furnished her with stronger objections to his plans.
The point was that she had failed him as a helpmate in the career he had chosen. He purposed to alter his course accordingly. He would do the square thing by her. She was his wife. He had that affection for her; but she should not block his way. He meant to get on with her or—without her. Other men did. He knew successful men in............