The Bond/Part 2/Chapter 6
VI
DIFFICULTIES had thickened upon them this winter. They had a larger flat, in a more salubrious (and expensive) neighbourhood, and three servants. The baby had made this difference, with the result that they felt poor. Teresa, with a pang, had given up her bachelor rooms, for the work she was now able to do did not justify her in keeping them. But the rent of Basil's studio was high, and he had not sold anything lately, except the work he had done for Mrs. Perry. His book of drawings had been published, with a definite, but not a money success. The publishers had wanted to call it "The City Toilers," and by including mainly types of honest misery, to give it a sentimental air of pity. But Basil called it "City Types," and put into it what he considered his best work, irrespective of subject. The result could not please the sentimental public, but it pleased Basil, and also Teresa, who desired that his artistic ability should be recognised. But it did not bring in much money. For the first time in his life Basil felt the pressure of money needs. The demands of his household seemed to grow steadily, and his income was comparatively a fixed quantity. He had never counted on making money, but now he was obliged to speculate on his work, and this brought him face to face with his own practical limitations. It was a standing grievance that Teresa was not economical. But Teresa, though she honestly tried, could not be—at least not more than a few days at a time. Then she forgot about it. She was not extravagant, but the daily worry of overseeing cheating tradesmen and servants, as well as watching the baby and the nurse, and seeing that Basil's clothes were in repair, and his meals on time, was sure to overpass at some point the limits of her domestic capacity.
They were gayer, too, this winter than ever. Teresa, after her year of the baby, had a craving for people, a quite new delight in going out, the more so since she was more beautiful and more admired. And gaiety meant expense—clothes, dinners, cabs—and less work. It meant, also, more or less emotional disturbance. Basil's theory that he was not of a jealous temperament had had a good test, and had been found not to hold water.
Among the people that they saw most of, domestic happiness was regarded as an amusing or pathetic myth, as you happened to take it. It was a mirage, and the traveller in the desert, if he could not help pursuing it, always recognised his mistake. He did not reach the mirage; but he might find a pleasant oasis or two by the way. An apparently complete frankness about their domestic relations was also the rule in this society. People talked about their wives or husbands as amusingly as they could, and quite without sentiment. The pose of the successful ones was that they were simple good friends, and didn't interfere with one another. Behind this mask, which Basil and Teresa assumed also, went on, no doubt, many a drama like their own; and many a secret believer in the myth struggled and strove to reach what he considered to be real waters, spreading cool and peaceful, and real protection from the glaring, grinding world. Peace was, perhaps, not to be hoped for in the relation of two civilised and youthful people who had the ideal of freedom and enjoyment. The world was too much with them for any real seclusion of spirit to be possible. But they had the ever-present sense of life, an unfailing interest in one another. They might quarrel, but they were never dull, and neither had as yet a need for any other one person. They had days of perfect, simple happiness, when material difficulties were ignored, and their real relation seemed the only thing that mattered; days of frank, wordly companionship, when they talked frivolously of serious things, and a light way of taking the world made it all gay and amusing. And they had their black days, when all went wrong, when they barely spoke to one another or communicated by means of notes; when they accused one another of self-indulgence, selfishness, egotism; when Teresa bitingly recalled Basil's sensual weaknesses, and Basil openly regretted his bachelor freedom, and assured Teresa that she was never meant for a wife. These discords were frequent, but they never lasted long; neither could stand the strain. Basil could not work under it, and it blackened the entire firmament for Teresa. It ended usually in a passionate reconciliation, wherein Basil ardently told Teresa that he could not live without her, nor with any other woman; and she promised to be domestic; and then the sky was blue, and the sunlight golden, and a heavenly breath descended upon them, and life, youth, and love seemed divine.
Their latest quarrel had been ostensibly about household affairs. The monthly bills had come in, and seemed to Basil enormous. And the nurse had been discovered feeding Ronald Grange at an undue hour. All Teresa's faults as a housewife were once more gone over, and Basil, with his usual vigour, had asserted that she cared nothing for the household, for the baby, or for him, but only for her own amusement. The real reason for the explosion was that Teresa, on the previous day, had gone out with her most devoted admirer in his automobile, and lunched with him in the country. He was a Southerner named Fairfax; he had made a fortune in lumber; he was good-looking and had the caressing manner of his kind toward women; and for several months now he had been coming constantly to see Teresa. His time was about equally divided between the South and New York; and when he was away he wrote to her. She always showed the letters to Basil; they were friendly, gay, and interested. She admitted that she liked Fairfax very much; that she found him amusing and charming. Basil said that he liked her friendship with Fairfax; it was in line with all his ideas. He said once: "It's more exciting to drive a restive team than a quiet one; only you must look out they don't get away." His own interest in his wife seemed to increase. It had lost the quiet of the first year; it was more like the perpetual unrest of courtship. Her successes, her gaiety, intensified the appeal of her beauty to him. He seemed, too, to be less sure of her, and this pleased Teresa, and added to the light excitement of their life.
On the morning after their slumming expedition they took their coffee together amicably; Basil was gentle, but gloomy. Teresa questioned him keenly; he resisted; but at last his real feeling came out, and he confessed to a torturing jealousy.
"I didn't know I had it in me," he said savagely—angry, not with her, but with himself. "And I can't stand it. It makes me feel weak—mentally and physically. It turns me sick. I think I'm wrong, but I can't help it. I believe the thing is stronger than I am. You're the only person in the world, Teresa, that can really make me suffer. And I believe you could half-kill me!"
His anger and resentment of his own irrationality touched Teresa, his emotion pleased her, but the practical consequences thereof rather vexed her.
"I've only done what you told me to do," she said plaintively. "You said you wanted me to have my friends among men, just as you have among women. I didn't make scenes for you—at least not serious ones—when you were so much with Mrs. Perry. And yet I had more reason to, for she was making love to you, and Jack doesn't make love to me—not seriously."
"Seriously! There it is, then—he does make love to you. I knew it. His whole manner to you shows it."
"Oh, he's Southern, you know, and they have that gallant way. My father had it—it's a tradition. He does like me, I'm sure—perhaps he's a little bit épris—but you always said you liked men to be fond of me, so long as"
"Yes, but you like him! You wouldn't want to spend hours alone with him if you didn't."
"Of course I like him, silly old thing! He's charming."
Basil groaned. "Women have a terrific advantage to us," he said viciously. "Nothing I can do can affect you very deeply, unless I should fall in love with another woman, and I can't do that. But you could very easily nearly kill me."
"Then it's your own fault if we have that advantage," said Teresa calmly. "First, you carry on yourselves in such a fashion that, as you say, we can't take your lapses seriously. And then you put such terrific emphasis on the slightest lapse on our part. Why do you put the weapon into our hands, and then provoke us, if you don't want to get hurt?"
"Provocation, as you call it, oughtn't to count. A woman ought to be strong enough to stand for herself, for what she really deeply wants, without being influenced by another person's acts."
"Two people can't live together intimately without influencing one another, and deeply. And especially a woman, for her character isn't formed till she's married. Of course, I can see how the other person would like to feel that what he does counts for nothing, for so he gets rid of all responsibility—only it doesn't work that way."
"The Orientals manage these things better," said Basil gloomily. "A Mohammedan can take as many women into his house as he can support, and they're all protected and cared for, and respectable. And if they're unfaithful, he can bow-string them. That's the right method. Monogamy is a foolish idea, and we waste an enormous amount of life in trying to live up to it. The Japanese are infinitely more sane than we are about the whole business. Sex ought to be divorced from emotion. They don't belong together. We've sentimentalised the thing till we don't know where we stand. It's all the fault of feminism. Women naturally sentimentalise it, and we've let them set the tone for our whole society, till we can't call our souls or bodies our own. It's weakness, and gets paid out as weakness always does. We belong to you now, you own us, and you make us feel it."
"Poor slaves!" mocked Teresa. "Why don't you rise and assert your rights? Put us back in the harem, and then go on with your great work of civilising the world in peace. I daresay we should be just as well off."
"I think you would. You can't be men, anyway, you know, and in our society you're bound to try to be, more or less. It's all wrong. The line ought to stand where it was drawn for all time, sharp and clear. Trying to rub it away is folly."
"I don't try to be a man," murmured Teresa. "I wouldn't be one for any amount. Poor, foolish creatures."
"Yes, you do try. You want the same freedom"
"I thought we agreed the ideal was equal freedom."
"So it would be if women were capable of it, if they were like men, capable of dissociating ideas that don't really belong together. But they're not. They emotionalise everything."
"Even an automobile drive and a sedate luncheon? Really, you're silly, Basil."
"Perhaps I am," he admitted darkly. "But I can't help it."
"I don't think, really, that it's a tremendous compliment to me—your jealousy," said Teresa coldly.
"No, it isn't. But it isn't the other thing either. You're so much alive, Teresa! And you're beautiful, and you love admiration. And really I feel that you might sometime care too much for someone else."
"It's no use arguing with a feeling," said Teresa. "I won't go out again with Fairfax."
Basil took her in his arms, in a wave of repentant emotion.
"No, I don't mean that. You shall do just as you want to do. I won't deprive you of any pleasure, if I can help it. I believe you do care a little for me!"
Teresa smiled tenderly, but with a shade of melancholy. She did not like the interruption of her friendship with Fairfax, which she felt was probably inevitable. It seemed, too, like a confession of defeat in the course they had meant their marriage to take. If they could not trust one another freely, if they had to take serious account of small things, and manage and humour one another, what became of her ideal of freedom and frankness? Teresa did not want to give up her ideas or her amusements—but neither did she want really to hurt or disturb Basil. The talk left her troubled and melancholy.