“Yes, Matey, I’ll admit there is something to what you say. I suppose I ought to be highty-tighty and bellow, ‘How dare you talk about my wife!’ But—Hell, Matey, I am so sick and tired and confused! Fran is a lot kinder and more appreciative than you think. A lot of what you imagine is snootiness is just her manner. She’s really shy, and tries to protect—”
“Oh, I am so tired, Sam, of hearing and reading about these modern folks—you get ’em in every novel—these sensitive plants that go around being rude and then stand back complacently and explain that it’s because they’re so shy!”
“Shut up, now! Listen to me!”
“That sounds better!”
“Well, I mean—It is true with Fran. Partly. And partly she enjoys it—gets a kick out of it—feels she’s a heroine in a melodrama. … Damn this bathtub—coldest armchair I’ve found in Europe.” Without a smile he laid the bath-mat on the edge of the tub, heavily sat down again, and went on:
“And she really thinks that having a social position is worth sacrificing for. And that it still matters to have a title. And I do know she makes me clumsy. But—Well, first place, I really am an old-fashioned believer in what we used to call the Home. I hate to see all the couples busting up the way they are. Think of the people we know that’ve separated or gotten divorced, right in our own bunch at home—Dr. and Mrs. Daniels—think of it, married seventeen years, with those nice kids of theirs. And then, and I guess this is more important, Fran has got a kind of charm, fascination, whatever you want to call it, for me that nobody else has. And when she likes something—it may be meeting somebody she likes, or a good party, or a sunset, or music—well, she’s so wrought up about it that it seems as if she had a higher-powered motor in her, with better ground cylinders, than most of us.
“Even when she’s snooty—oh, she’s trying to have some form in life, some standards, not just get along anyhow, sloppily, the way most of us do; and then we resent her demanding that we measure up to what she feels is the highest standard. And her faults—oh, she’s a child, some ways. To try to change her (even if a fellow could do it!) would be like calling in a child that was running and racing and having a lovely time in the sunshine, and making her wash dishes.”
“And so she leaves you to wash the dishes! Oh, Sam, it’s a thankless job to butt in and tell a man that in your important opinion, his wife is a vampire bat. But it makes your friends sore to see you eternally apologetic to your wife, when she ought to thank her lucky stars she’s got you! I swear she never, for one moment, with anybody, thinks what she can give, but only what she can get. She thinks that nobody on earth is important except as they serve her or flatter her. But—You’ve never been interested in any other woman, have you?”
“Not really.”
“I wonder if you won’t be? I’m making a private bet with myself that after another six months of carrying Fran’s shawl, you’ll begin to look around. And if you do, you’ll be surprised at the number of nice women that’ll fall for you! Tell me, Sam. Could you fall for them?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe in being deliberately unhappy for the sake of sticking to a bad bargain. If Fran and I did drift apart and I couldn’t find some kind of security elsewhere, I wouldn’t regard it as any virtue, but simply as an inability to face things as they are—”
“Ah hah! A year ago you wouldn’t have admitted that! A year ago, if I’d dared even to thumb my nose at Fran, you’d’ve bitten me! Sam, you old darling, I never have criticized Fran before, have I?—not in all these years. Now I feel that the bust-up has happened, and all that’s needed is for you to see it, and then you’ll be nice and heartbroken and sulky and unhappy, and after that you’ll find some darling that’ll be crazy about you and spoil you proper, and then all will be joyous tra-la—curse it, that sounds like Tub! And I’m going to bed. G’night, Sam dear. Like to ring us up about eleven?”
As he plowed down the vast corridors of the hotel to his room, too sleepy to think, Sam felt that this saint of unmorality had converted him, and opened a door upon a vista of tall woods and dappled lawns and kind faces.
XXVII
What Tub and Matey and Sam did during their week together may be deduced by studying a newspaper list of “Where to Lunch, Dine, and Dance in Paris,” the advertisements of dressmakers, jewelers, perfumers, furniture-dealers, and of revues; and by reprinting for each evening the more serious features of Tub’s first night in Paris.
It was a fatiguing week, but rather comforting to Sam.
Through it, the pious admonitions of Matey, along with the thought of Minna von Escher and his own original virtue, prepared him to yield to temptation—only he saw no one who was tempting.
The Pearsons begged him to go on to Holland with them, but he said that he had business in Paris; he spoke vaguely of conferences with motor agents. Actually, he wanted a day or two for the luxury of sitting by himself, of walking where he would, of meditating in long undisturbed luxurious hours on what it was all about.
He had two hasty, stammering notes from Fran, in which she said that she missed him, which was all very pleasant and gratifying, but in which she babbled of dancing with Kurt von Obersdorf till three a.m.—of
