The Bond/Part 2/Chapter 7
VII
BASIL himself saved the situation. That night they were going out to dinner, and in the carriage on the way he explicitly denied what he had said, pronounced it only a mood, and assured Teresa that he wanted her to be perfectly free, and not to give up the least of her amusements because of an unreasonable feeling on his part. He admitted emotionally that it was unreasonable, and stated his entire trust in her so convincingly that Teresa's spirits rose with a leap.
"That's all right, then—now we're ourselves again!" she said gaily. "I didn't quite recognise you in the rôle of Bluebeard! You give me carte blanche, and I promise I shan't want to look into the forbidden cupboard!"
"No, don't promise anything—except that you'll always like me better than anyone else."
"I needn't promise that—I can't help it. Life is so amusing with you, Basil! I feel so gay and young to-night—all the worries seem little things. The baby was so dear to-day—he's the most intelligent little thing, and so strong and alive! I'm going to model a little profile of him. Yes, he really has got a profile. And to think I didn't want him—what a fool I was! … But there's a good side to not wanting things you haven't got, and idealising them, and thinking if you only had them, how happy you'd be. I've never done that. It always seems to me that if I can't be happy with what I've got, I can't anyway. And I do really think I've got all there is to get in life—all there is for me. … I might like a little more money but nothing else!"
Basil held her hand clasped in his, and listened.
"You like excitement," he said.
"Oh, a little, now and then—a new dress, an interesting talk But I don't need much, do I, now?"
"I don't know. You wouldn't like to have anything cut off."
"Well, would you?"
"No—and I like you to be full of life, as you are. You wouldn't interest me half as much if you were different! You fascinate me, and always have. Only be good—as good as you can!"
Teresa did not protest when he rumpled her hair in a quick embrace. She laughed gaily.
"Life is good," she said contentedly.
The dinner was gay, and too large for general talk. Basil was near one end of the table, and Teresa near the other, with Fairfax beside her—a provision of the hostess. Teresa thoroughly enjoyed her tête-à-tête, for it was almost that. She knew that she was looking wonderfully well in her white dress, but Fairfax's praise was none the less welcome. He was one of the men enamoured of women's luxury, and she was aware that he would have liked to see her each time in a new dress, and arrayed with more coquetry even than she cared to use. She laughed at this trait in him—it went with much else in his character that she thought amusing, but rather despicable. But she liked his more masculine side—his energy, ability, and clear-headedness. He talked about men and affairs with incisive force, and had a lightly cynical attitude toward life in general which went rather oddly with his devotional attitude toward women.
He was, at bottom, thoroughly conventional; and part of Teresa's pleasure lay in shocking him. He had from the first been amused and interested by the freedom of her talk; then he had taken to combating lightly her ideas; but as he knew her better, he became more vehement in his protest. He thought her idea of marriage totally wrong; and he had been horrified at learning the extent of her information about life in general, and Basil's responsibility therein. He, as Teresa pointed out to him, thoroughly agreed with her Aunt Sophy, that women should be protected as much as possible from knowledge—outside their sphere.
"Only Aunt Sophy thinks our sphere is politics, while you think it's domesticity," said Teresa.
"Of course I think it is. Her home and society—what more does any woman want?"
"Ah, society! When you take in society, you let in the serpent, and its wisdom! Unless you mean just an occasional tea-drinking, or a dove luncheon. Do you think if one's to have any relations with men and women one doesn't need all the knowledge possible?"
"You have your instinct—that can't go wrong," said the bachelor.
"Oh, can't it! You'd reduce us to the rudiments, wouldn't you? Why shouldn't we have the amusement of contemplating the world and people as they really are? It's the most instructive spectacle possible. I can never be thankful enough that I married a man who isn't afraid of reality, for me any more than for himself. You would shut your wife up in a toy paradise, with everything upholstered in rose-colour."
"There are a whole lot of things I know that my wife would never know, you may depend on that," Fairfax responded with emphasis. "What nonsense, imagining that a man's view of life and a woman's can ever be the same!"
"And can't one be supposed capable of taking to some degree an impersonal view of life? Can't one forget occasionally that one is a woman, and be simply an intelligence?"
"I should say not! What do you make of hundreds of generations of inherited prejudices and ways of feeling, that colour your thought unconsciously? You can't get rid of that heritage for an instant. … You couldn't understand a man if you tried for a thousand years."
"'Wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother'! Do you think I shan't understand my son when he grows up?"
"No, you won't, and if you're wise you won't try. We like women best that don't pretend to understand us."
"'We'? Speak for yourself, Jack. There are plenty of men that don't believe in the doll's house. I shall see that Ronald Grange, when he grows up, has more modern ideas than you have!" And Teresa warbled frivolously:
"'Woman is the chosen
Ornament of home—
Man is what the beer is,
Woman is the foam.'"
When they talked ideas, they were always combative; and in his sentimental moods as well, Fairfax showed his conviction that Teresa was a charming creature, married to the wrong sort of man, and in danger of being spoiled. Fairfax and Basil had never been more than mere acquaintances, and neither liked the other. Teresa understood that a mentally conventional man could never like Basil; and she was entertained by the attempt which Fairfax, like most of the men who had admired her, made to manufacture domestic infelicity for her. They were so sure that she could not be happy with a man like Basil!
Fairfax on this evening was full of regrets for his impending departure. He would have to be away from New York for two weeks on business, he said, with a melancholy look. He was in a mood, half of pique with her, half of more liking than he had ever shown. Teresa often glanced down the table at Basil, during their talk, but could never discover that he looked at her. She thought he was looking tired and excited; and he seemed absorbed in his neighbour, a very pretty young woman whom Teresa did not know. Teresa had repeated to Fairfax Basil's comment on some remark of his own, and his pique was due to this.
"Do you tell your husband every earthly thing?" he enquired.
"Everything!" said Teresa joyously.
"And he reads your letters, too, I suppose."
"All of 'em. And I read his."
"You think you do, you mean?"
"Yes, I mean I think I do!"
"What childishness! As though two people could really keep up that sort of thing."
"Ah, but they can. And I assure you it's most interesting."
"It must be. But do people never tell either of you things that are not meant for another person? Or don't you consider confidences binding? Aren't you two individuals at all, but only a corporation?"
"Something like that, I think. … And you know real confidences are rare—at least to me. I don't care about them."
"Then can neither of you have a friend whose confidences would be real, and whose friendship would be for you as an individual, not for you as a corporation?"
Teresa reflected.
"Isn't it conceivable that a person might care for you, and mightn't care for your husband? And that he mightn't care to be served up for that enviable person's further enjoyment? Wouldn't you have any loyalty to a feeling like that?"
"It's a difficult question!" sighed Teresa. "Why bother about such things now? I came in such a gay mood, feeling quite happy and frivolous! Don't spoil all my pleasure."
"I wish I felt happy and frivolous. Then I suppose I might add to it instead of spoiling it."
"Yes, you might. What is the good of being serious at dinner? And such a good dinner, too—but not better than our lunch the other day. I did enjoy that,"
"Did you?" Fairfax looked a shade more cheerful. "I'm glad. Perhaps we can have another when I come back. And I'll be as frivolous as I can. I need to be frivolous if I'm going to amuse two people."
He came back to that again and again. He assured Teresa that her idea of marriage was totally wrong—unsocial.
"Marriage is an institution—a part of the state, of the organisation of society. Two people marry really for the purpose of helping one another socially, I mean in a broad sense; of bringing up children. The mere personal relation is a very small part of it. The feeling with which they marry, if they're in love with each other, doesn't last, can't last. It's bound to change. They ought to adapt themselves to that change, and make a broader relation on the basis of it—to take the family as the unit of their interest, not one another."
"I don't agree with you."
"Well, you will, some day. You'll find out that it doesn't work. Why marry at all, from your point of view?"
"Because it's more practical, and because common interests, and children, and common social relations help the original relation—they're in the line of its natural growth."
"You want to take all you can get out of society, then, and not give in return?"
"I do give—I give children, for example. But my private affairs are no concern of society's. Conventions are only made to be broken. Why shouldn't I have my own way of breaking them?"
"If you hadn't this particular convention, then, you admit you'd be more a social being."
"Yes, but I shouldn't be so happy."
"You risk being very unhappy sometime. That's what it is to put too much stress on one special relation."
Teresa shrugged her shoulders.
"If Allah wills it," she said, and her brilliant eyes seemed gaily to defy fate.