“Nothing. We just can’t make a go of it. You don’t get me. I’m not making a scene. I’m not trying to bully you. I meant just what I said. I’m going back to Italy, from New York, on the first ship. I’m not blaming or criticizing—”
She sat abruptly on the chair before her dressing-table. She said quietly, with fear edging her voice, “And what is to become of me?”
“I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t have met you on the ship.”
She moaned. “Oh! You do manage to hurt! I congratulate you! You see, I’ve been flattering myself you really wanted to come back to me!”
He started to say something comforting, then held it back in panic, as if in danger. “I’m not going to be polite, Fran. You know how awfully I’ve loved you, a good many years. You tampered with it. … What’s going to become of you? I don’t know. But I guess it’ll be just the same thing that’s been becoming of you this past couple of years. You haven’t needed me. You’ve found people to play with, and plenty of beaux. I suppose you’ll go on finding them—”
“And this is the man that ‘loved me awfully’—”
“Wait! For the first time in all our arguments, I’m going to think of what would become of me! I can’t help you. I’m just your attendant. But me—you can kill me. I didn’t used to mind your embarrassing me and continually putting me in my place. Didn’t even know you were doing it. But I do now, and I won’t stand it!”
“Was it your dear Mrs. Cortright who taught you that lovely theory? about embarrassing you? After the years when I’ve never allowed one single soul to criticize you—”
“Understand? I’m finished!”
He did not, unfortunately, leave her in any heroic and dignified way. He flounced out of the stateroom like a child in a tantrum. And that was because he knew that only by childish violence could he escape from her logic, and because he knew that he must escape, even over the side of the lurching ship. For she was indeed perfectly logical and sound. She knew what she wanted!
It was misery for him to look out at her from the taxicab which he was taking to the Italian Line dock, after three days in New York; to see her standing in front of the hotel, alone, deserted, her eyes pitiful, and to realize that he might never see her again. The look in her eyes had been the meaning of life for him, and he was deserting it.
They were dining at the Ritz in Paris, Edith and Sam, feeling superior to its pretentiousness, because that evening they had determined to return to America, when his divorce should be complete, and to experiment with caravans. They were gay, well dined and well content.
But after his second cognac the orchestra played selections from Viennese operettas, and he remembered how happy Fran and he had been in Berlin. He remembered the wretchedness of the letter he had received from her that day. She was staying with Emily in Zenith; she said that she was seeing no one; that his “dear friends Tub and Matey” were a little too polite; and that she was thinking of going, in a few days, to Italy—
Through the darkness beyond the music, he saw her fleeing, a desolate wraith, and his heart was heavy with pity for the frightened and bewildered child who once had laughed so eagerly with him.
He came out of his silence with a consciousness that Edith was watching him. She said lightly, “You enjoy being sad about her! But hereafter, every time there is a music, I shall also think of Cecil Cortright. How handsome he was! He spoke five languages! How impatient I was with him! How I failed him! How virtuous it makes me feel to flay myself! What a splendid, uncommon grief I have! Dear Sam! … What a job it is to give up the superiority of being miserable and self-sacrificing!”
He stared, he pondered, he suddenly laughed, and in that laughter found a youthfulness he had never known in his solemn youth.
He was, indeed, so confidently happy that he completely forgot Fran and he did not again yearn over her, for almost two days.
Colophon
Dodsworth
was published in 1929 by
Sinclair Lewis.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Brendan Fattig and Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2016 by
Marcia Brooks, Cindy Beyer, and The Online Distributed Proofreaders Canada Team
for
Faded Page
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
L’Eléphant pris au piège de Frémiet et la Tour Eiffel,
a painting completed in 1922 by
Jules Ernest Renoux.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 1, 2025, 9:01 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/sinclair-lewis/dodsworth.
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