Sometimes when a man has been shot, he stands for the briefest moment before he falls. So Cutter stood, still facing the window, while the fatal shock passed through him. This was Helen who had spoken, who had reminded him of the time when his train left, but not his wife. He flirted his head around and snatched a glance at her. She was sitting very erect, not touching the back of her chair. The little frills on her dress stuck up stiffly, like the petals of a very fine white flower. Her cheeks were scarlet above this whiteness; but there were no tears. Her chin was lifted; her lips closed; her eyes covering him like a frost on a cold clear night, one of those still nights when the whole of Nature’s business is to freeze. He turned, took a step toward her, and did not dare take the next step.
You may think you are making the best of a bad situation by ending it. You may persuade yourself that you are doing the square thing,[174] praise yourself for behaving better than the average man does in a similar predicament. Then suddenly something happens, a word falls upon your ear, or you see yourself revealed in the eye of your victim as a rogue, a common fellow who has lost his standing.
Cutter had some such sensation as this, confused but devastating. He was determined to be free, to be no longer bound to this woman who ceased to appeal to him and who did not belong to the world he had won by success. But how was this? She had turned the tables on him. She was not only taking him at his word; she was dismissing him.
I do not say that it is a queer thing about a man of this quality, but it is one of the abortive characteristics of every man of this quality, that he has a dog-in-the-manger instinct always toward the wife he discards. He expects her to remain cravenly faithful to him, to love and cherish him tearfully and patiently while he takes a whiff around, because, heaven bless us, isn’t that the nature of good and chaste women? It was. And yet here was Helen, instantly assuming the autonomous attitude of a free state. She was making no effort to hold him or save him.
Hang it all, a man never could understand a[175] woman! Here he was standing before his discarded wife, having done the best he could for her, divided his fortune with her, released her from her normal duties to him, while he might have kept this property and lived as he pleased. And in spite of all this, he was made to feel strangely humiliated, worthless and unspeakable to her. This was what her look and manner meant. Good heaven, he could not slink off defeated like this! He had meant to go with his head up, not diminished. The sting of that would interfere with his pleasure, and he had made expensive plans for a gratifying existence in New York.
“What I want, Helen,” he began after this tumultuous pause, speaking in the husband tone of voice, “is a sensible understanding, not a breach. I have provided for you as my wife should be provided for. If you should ever need my help or protection—”
“You have barely time to make your train,” she interrupted, glancing at the clock and keeping her eye now on this clock. Her voice was not that of a wife, but of a lady, speaking probably to some agent whom she was determined to get out of the house before he sold her something she did not want and could not use.
[176]“Oh, very well, if you won’t be reasonable!” he exclaimed as he strode flashily past her.
But when he reached the door he halted, looked back at her like an actor being put out of the scene and required by his lines to pause, show indecision, the fangs of his outraged emotions to the appreciative audience. But there was no audience to witness Cutter’s histrionic exit; only this neat, cool, little star of a lady with flaming cheeks, whose eyes remained resolutely upon the face of the clock.
This man, who a while ago could not bear the touch of his wife’s hand, experienced a momentary revulsion toward his own future, to all it offered. He wanted to go back, take Helen in his arms, kiss her, feel the cleanness and sweetness of her goodness and nearness to him. But this was only momentary. He remembered the dullness of the years. He must buck up, he told himself hastily; just let him get through, escape this last tug of the old life and he would be a free man. Beneath this shrewd calculation of himself, there was a faint premonition that he had better not go back in there to perform these last sacred rites of parting with his wife. He was afraid of her, as criminals fear law.
He went out, closing the front door softly behind[177] him. He walked hurriedly toward the station, disturbed and shamed by the thoughts his very steps seemed to toss up in his mind. For months, while his affair in New York was progressing l............