The winter of discontent

Preface

HIS is the story of an egoist.

If she were less concerned about herself the story might never have been written.

She is not a heroine, for she has too many faults. Just a simple, ordinary person, imaginative, fretful, visionary, querulous. Circumstances envelop her, and she is incapable of surmounting them. When the crisis comes she learns that she has to be made over. Of course you will lose patience with her, until you remem¬ ber that you yourself have been culpable of the same silly, nonsensical faults. Don’t close the book and con¬ sole yourself with the thought that she is impossible. She is a type, and her likeness may be found in every community in the country—in Gopher Prairie, Zenith, Shefford, and New York.

We prefer to read only those books that portray our best sides, for the seductive consolation they afford. But some of the people we meet with in books we sel¬ dom encounter in real life. It is stimulating to see our¬ selves as we really are, however unpleasant it may be to have our shortcomings characterized, our conceits exposed, our selfish appetites revealed. It teaches us

VI

PREFACE the need of disciplining our wills, our affections, our minds.

Edith Colman is only a type.

No one hopes to imitate her.

But Nature sometimes rhymes her children.

I

W ITH a mournful sigh Edith Colman threw her¬ self on the sofa near her dressing-table and closed her eyes in languor. On her face was a look of petulance.

It was only eight o’clock, but already the night seemed terribly long, lonesome, and intolerable. Out¬ side, the cold winter wind blew fierce blasts through the trees, making them strain and crack. Snow was piled up on the sidewalks, while scores of shovels beat ner¬ vous staccatos in an effort to clear it off. Snow cov¬ ered the roads like a blanket, where noisy motor cars droned and sputtered as they endeavored to force a way through it. All day long it had stormed, and the massive firmament of clouds threw down a man¬ tle of gloom. To add to the lack of cheer in the room, a dim light burned on the dresser and cast a dull glow about the place. Patches of shade swelled beyond the bed and out intb the hallway, while a solitary strip of doubtful brightness crept up the stairs from the en¬ trance hall where the vestibule light was turned on. The house was shrouded in somber stillness, save for the melancholy sounds filtering in from the outside, and Edith, pensive and sad, waited for her husband, worry¬ ing over his protracted delay.

Ordinarily he was in the habit of informing her of the cause of any unexpected tardiness, but of late he had grown conspicuously careless about this important detail. For some reason she could not rid herself of the notion that all was not well with him. Visions of crowded trolley cars, caught in the jam of traffic, pro¬ jected themselves in the dim light around her, and she saw his unconscious form taken from the wreckage and removed to a hospital, where he kept calling for her in vain. On the other hand she was sadly aware that he was no longer the boyish lover of old. He had be¬ come tepid in his attentions, careless about many things. It was this marked indifference to the ordinary urbani¬ ties of domestic life which she had grown to notice more and more of late in his conduct. The thought saddened her, for she deemed it unfair that she should be forced to worry without costing him a thought. She would not mind so much if she were sure he meant it, but it was the carelessness of it that annoyed her. He was so good in many ways that she could not help for¬ giving him, but there were times when he was shock¬ ingly impossible.

From a corner of the room, partly concealed in the shadowy substance, and on the silence of the wintry night, came the sound of merry laughter. It served to dispel, for an instant, the solemn sadness that per¬ vaded the room and the haunting visions that floated through it. Edith roused herself.

“Babs! What are you doing?”

‘‘Nothing!” That was the usual reply. Babs was always doing “nothing” whenever she was called to account. Better to be convicted on evidence than to accuse one’s self needlessly! To-night she was but play¬ ing with her doll.

Barbara Colman was live years old, but she looked seven. She was precocious, and wanted it clearly un¬ derstood by all that she had already passed from in¬ fancy to girlhood. She was never anybody’s “little girl.” She was just “girl.” She did not play with everybody in the neighborhood, only with the “nice people.” She was going to visit France when she grew up and meet the relatives of Eudoxia, Miss Wheaton’s maid, and acquire an education just like hers!

“Mother!” she cried now, leaning on the couch.

“Now, Babs! You mustn’t bother mother. Can’t you see she is tired?”

“I am tired, too!” came the artful reply, as she climbed into her mother’s lap.

“Well! Come, then! Lay your head down and go to sleep.”

“But I don’t want to sleep.”

“You don’t? What do you want?”

“Just to rest!”

A few minutes’ silence—and then:

“Mother?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Can I have some candy?”

“Can I?”

“Yes, mother!”

“Didn’t I tell you nice people never say ‘Can I?’ ” No answer.

“Didn’t I?”

“Yes, ma’am,” falteringly.

“Now what should you say?”

Signs of mental distress, followed by efforts to rise and depart.

“Now, Bab, you must answer mother. What did I tell you to say when you asked for something?”

“Didn’t I tell you to use ‘May I’ when asking permission?”

Head nods in reserved manner.

“Now—say it correctly.”

“May I have some candy?”

“No, Babs, there is no more candy!”

“Why?”

“Because there isn’t. You ate it.”

More silence, during which time the wind shrieked pitilessly and the windows trembled in fear.

“Mother, where is daddy?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“When is he coming home?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Where is he?”

“At the office, I presume.”

“Will he be home to-night?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Fell a protracted silence broken only by the howling of the wind.

Satisfied that there was no more to be said on the subject and content with the information that daddy would soon be home (with another fresh box of candy and a new story like the one he told her last night about the Happy Beggar) Babs settled herself com¬ fortably beside her mother and drowsed off. Edith looked at the peaceful child and began to stroke the flaxen head.

“Why is it,” she mused to herself, “that men occupy so large a part in women's hearts when they them¬ selves continually put their home, their children, their wives, their domestic affairs in the remotest suburb of their own?” . . No, perhaps she did not mean it just

that way . . . but there was such a difference between the sexes in this respect. She could feel it, if she could not describe it. Woman, it seemed, gave her all to the man and to the home. Men never did that. They were too busy to devote themselves to such things. They could manage and direct great corporations, superintend and construct vast structures, shape and define the policies of empires, but they didn’t know the first thing about a home or what it meant to bring up a family. They had reputations to acquire, business to attend to, ambitions to gratify. When they married it was usually for the purpose of setting up a domicile, where they could repair after the day’s toil; but they were unwilling to sacrifice in its behalf any of the big things of life, business, politics, fraternal organizations, stocks and bonds. Women, when they married, gavq their all. Men made judicious reservations. How one-sided! It seemed to Edith that women always got the worst of the bargain. Poor Babs! She pitied her for being a girl. Some day she would grow up and surrender herself to a man, and, the romance over, wonder why she did it.

She herself had done it, and now, after six or seven years, she was wondering why. It was not because she was unhappy; “discontented” would better describe her condition. Little by little she had grown to feel that her married life had lost all flavor of romance, owing, in great measure, to the many incompatibilities which shattered mutual confidence and which neither husband nor wife seemed capable of smoothing over. It was true, he was her inferior in many things. She had not reckoned with that. “Why do you think of marrying a man like Robert Colman?” her mother had begged her. But she was headstrong.

For Robert Colman was not born to wealth, neither did he command position in life. He was an ordinary young man with an extraordinary aptitude for doing things well. He meant to succeed in a world that smiles upon those who make the most of what they have. The first and only employment he ever sought, after completing his high school course, was in the office of an attorney-at-law, where he applied himself with such assiduity that he was enabled to pass the examination for the State Bar at the termination of his apprentice¬ ship. A year later he was taken into partnership by his mentor, Judge Walsh, who from the start had evinced more than a passing interest in the young man. He was honest and courageous, for which reasons he won the respect and esteem of the men of influence in the city of Shefford. He was industrious, and his name soon became known in the community. It was due to these qualities that Edith had, in the beginning, found herself attracted by him. He was different from most of the young chaps she had known, even though he was poor and of ordinary parentage. There were other traits that presented him to her imagination in refresh¬ ing contrast to the men with whom she had spent many hours of useless comradeship all her life.

“I know we are going to be happy,” she declared to him just before their marriage, “and I don’t care what people say.”

“What can they say?” he asked, a little abashed; “have I done anything to make myself unworthy of you ?”

“No, of course not; they are only jealous of you. You are different from the rest, you have worked hard for w 7 hat you have. It means more, doesn’t it, to have to work for what you want?”

“If you infer that I cannot measure up to your ac¬ complishments, I agree. You have been blessed with opportunities w T hich were not vouchsafed to me. I could not enter college, much as I should have liked to, and I never had the time to meet people socially. But what I have is yours if you are willing to share it with me. You can help me immeasurably by what you have, and in this way supplement my deficiencies.”

The bargain was honest. Their marriage was not going to be any selfish demonstration of individual tastes and preferments; it was to be built on solid soil— the soil of service, sacrifice, and cooperation. There would be no master or mistress in their home. Authority would be fairly divided. Tenderness and forbear¬ ance were to be mutually observed. It was to be a union of opposite excellences such as every boy and girl dreams of in the springtime, when hearts are free and reason'knows no reasons, a form of partnership gov¬ erned by the self-same standards, with everything for each other and everything commonly shared.

None of those shocking modern notions respecting feminine freedom, such as Edith had read about in col¬ lege, would be found in her home. She had never quite approved of the theories concerning the social and eco¬ nomic independence of women. Others might find them novel and charming. She could not. What if her education was superior to her husband’s, she was still but complementary to him! That was the law of creation. Woman as man’s equal is not and never can be woman. She is nobler in some respects, when meas¬ ured by her own standards, but she is a complete entity in herself, individually distinct from and dissimilar to man. Her duty was manifest: in her lay the power to make the comforts of the home, to make the most of the finer arts she had studied and mastered, devot¬ ing her time and energy to the advising and comforting of her husband.

She began her married life with the finest ideals. In the years that followed she succeeded in outgrowing most of them. True, she accepted the responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood and met them faithfully, but there were bad moments. Rising in the morning to prepare breakfast on the gas-stove in the kitchenette where there was scarcely room to turn around, bathing and dressing the baby and trying to keep her still while she washed dishes and put them away, setting in order the things of the house, sweeping and dusting rooms, ordering the meats and groceries, mending and caring for the clothes—not much romance here! Nothing but tedious monotony and endless existence for days and weeks and months—and nothing better to hope for; and no choice but to keep on. The house itself an¬ noyed her; it was one of those attached houses, com¬ mon enough to all cities, small and stuffy. Poor as it was, its maintenance kept them continually on the edge of their means. There was no semblance of pri¬ vacy in these thin-walled apartments, where conversa¬ tion could be plainly heard through plaster and boards. Still, it had one attraction—it was fashionable to oc¬ cupy these places, especially if they happened to be located on the Avenue. Everybody worshiped the Avenue. It was the rendezvous of the upper set, and to dwell there lent one a somewhat exaggerated impor¬ tance and distinction.

The city of Shefford was noted for the number of its ultra-fashionable families, the real or pretended progeny of the early New England settlers. Their high lineage seemed to guarantee them a sort of god¬ like existence. There was no community, not even Pil¬ grim Plymouth, that honored its early traditions more scrupulously than did this same city, whose very atmos¬ phere was charged with that reserve and decorum so typical of early Puritanism. Its people were stately and supercilious, as if the entire burden of Colonial history was placed upon their shoulders. It had its exclusive sets, some of which could trace back an un¬ broken lineage to John Alden and Priscilla Allen, the eighth generation now vaunting the proud mixture of that blood. It had its time-honored burial-places (though these were unkempt and forlorn often), where children, halting on their way from school, loved to trace with their tiny fingers the obscure biographies on the soft brownstone slabs. It had its old buildings, some of them designed by the great Bulfinch himself, and lately restored to their original lines by philan¬ thropic citizens; its old churches, with the identical pews in which the patriots were wont to worship; its shrines and landmarks in the midst of commerce and industry, their antique fronts adorned with bronze tablets com¬ memorative of sites and achievements. Small wonder its people affected an air of distinction and segregation. They were woven into Colonial history by their geneal¬ ogy; in them the present and the past met and kissed.

It was this upper set, with its luxury and pretense, that enticed Edith Colman, and tempted her. She be¬ came impatient with her lot and felt acutely envious of the lot of others. She longed to be noticed by these exclusive men and women, and counted it a real favor to be numbered in their company. She tried to imitate them in everything, from smoking cigarettes—though this shocked her—to owning a summer camp. But smoking made her sick, and she had not the means to measure up to her ambitions. Her only claim to ex¬ clusiveness lay in the solitary fact of her living on the Avenue. Robert was but an ordinary lawyer, which, in a city like Sheftord w T here office buildings fairly ii teemed with students of the courts, meant that he could never earn more than a pittance. What if he was hon¬ est and sincere in his dealings with others or more in¬ telligent than the average—such talents were not marketable commodities. The honest lawyer seemed to be always poverty-stricken. She could see no pros¬ pect of his ever earning enough money to give her the position in life she desired, unless some beneficent spirit, laden with everything from honors to wealth, winged its way to her door. Social position fired her fancy. But poverty called her back to earth and set her se¬ curely within the narrow walls of her home.

As she reached this point in her retrospection, the front door opened and she heard her husband’s familiar cough in the vestibule. She leaned back and drew aside the curtain to peer into the night. The storm had passed, and a pale golden moon filled the heaveps, lighting up the fragments of clouds hurrying on. Then she bent over her sleeping child. Poor Babs! How peaceful and happy she looked! She had been too tired to wait for “daddy” and greet him as he came upstairs,

“What in the world happened?” was Edith’s first impatient question. “Where have you been until this hour—without any supper?”

“What time is it?” he returned, mechanically. “It isn’t late.”

“You’d think it late if you had to sit here alone all day long. Did you have any supper?”

“Yes; a couple of sandwiches. I don’t care for anything.”

He passed in front of her indifferently, and began to remove his coat. The lines on his face, the deep furrows that cleaved his forehead and cheeks, were un¬ usually prominent, and his eyes were swollen. It was evident he had had a trying day and as a consequence was none too cheerful. Bab awoke, and called to him.

“Hello, kidlets!” he cried, catching her and tossing her into the air. “Fell asleep waiting for the old man, didn’t you? Hey! You’re not mad at me, too, are you?”

Babs giggled enthusiastically.

“Any one would be angry at you,” Edith replied, in piqued accents. “Where were you? You haven’t told me yet.”

“At the office! Good Lord! Where else would you think I’d be in a storm like this?”

“How should I know? You might have called up and told me.”

“I had a thousand things to think of. Never gave the ’phone a thought until now. I suppose I might have called, at that,” he added.

“I never met any one like you, so downright indif¬ ferent and careless. It wouldn’t bother you in the least, I suppose, whether this house kept or not, unless you happened to come home and find it gone. Then you would wonder what happened! You think of nothing from morning to night but that office. While you are home you are talking about it, or you have a pile of books under your arm and you shut yourself up in your room like a hermit. There was a time when you would call up occasionally to inquire how things were going, but no more.”

“I am sorry, Edith. You are quite right; I should have called you, but I expected to be leaving every minute. It was not the storm that kept me, but two or three men in conference. They didn’t get home either, or think of calling up their wives; so I suppose they are hearing about it now.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t care—but you have grown so careless and apathetic. There was a time when I thought nothing could come between us.”

“And nothing has-”

“A thousand things! Business! Politics! What¬ ever do you want mixing up in politics for? There is something suggestive of cheap advertising, questionable methods, dirty apparel in a politician. I wish you would give it up.”

“Give it up!” he echoed. “Why, Edith, you do not understand. I am not getting into this game for the excitement of it, but for what I can get out of it. It means everything to-day to keep in the public eye. It is a matter of business with most of us. Call it cheap advertising, dirty work—I know what it is. But I have to do it. Judge Walsh used to say, ‘Get into poli¬ tics, boy, or join the National Guard. It’s another way of getting better acquainted.’ ”

The blood rose to Edith’s temples, for she had to give in to him again. She felt that she knew better, yet she was unable to convince him, so adroit was he in the use of words. Before he came in she was ex¬ asperated to the breaking point, but this passed away. He was so frank about everything—the storm, the con¬ ference, the forgetfulness—that she could find no reason for not excusing him. For the moment she was not even conscious of the causes of what had happened; there was another matter to engage his attention.

“I hope you have made no plans for to-morrow night,” she ventured like one who needed courage to say what was in her mind,

“To-morrow night! Why?”

There it was again; always replying to a question by asking another. Flow could she ever get on with onq who argued this way?

“We have been invited to the theater.”

“Indeed!”

“By the Wheatons. Wasn’t it nice of them?”

“Nice! For what?”

“To invite us. There are hundreds who would give their souls to be seen with the Wheatons. They really count in this town.”

“They did once. The old man was a power. Nat Wheaton owned the city of Shefford once upon a time. He made and unmade more men than you and I know.”

“If you mean politics I don’t know what you are talking about. To-day the Wheatons are the real lead¬ ers of the city. Their name alone is worth much— and to be seen with them is a privilege.”

It was kind enough of them, thought Robert Colman, but inconsequential insofar as privilege was concerned. Social leaders made little impression on him, and peo¬ ple with a pedigree reminded him of a horse show, where gallant steeds, groomed and sleek, waited atten¬ tively in the various stalls for their accustomed pettings. He had a poor opinion of wealthy parasites.

i5

“There is another reason I am anxious to go,” she continued. “Nazimova is playing Ibsen.”

“Who is Ibsen?”

“A Norwegian, and one of the greatest dramatists of modern times. And they say Nazimova does him beautifully.”

“A problem play, I suppose?”

“A Doll’s House—yes, I suppose you would call it a problem play. I read it in college, but I have never seen it presented. I have the book here if you would care to run through it.”

“I do not think I can go-”

“Why not?”

“Well, I have an important appointment for to¬ morrow night.”

“I never saw one like you. Don’t you want to be seen with the Wheatons? It is very seldom I ask you to take me anywhere-”

“Don’t be so foolish! It just happens I can’t go, that’s all. There is a committee meeting to-morrow night and I can’t stay away. I might have postponed it had I known this earlier.”

“Why didn’t you call up, and I would have told you.”

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated and turned away.

“Bert, I am going whether you take me or not. In fact I have already accepted. I don’t see why I should be compelled to sit home alone just because you find it impossible to come with me. People are getting away from that idea more and more. It is not at all unusual nowadays to find wives going out to places of amuse¬ ment without their husbands.”

“Let’s leave it at that. If you don’t mind I won’t.

I suppose when you tell them-”

“Oh, no! You can tell them.”

He left the room.

II

E DITH could not quite forgive her husband that refusal, and spoke to him little the next morn¬ ing. Breakfast was a dull meal, for neither manifested the remotest interest in the other. Robert Colman seemed to be conscious only of his strenuous program for the day—at least he so impressed her— while she, on the other hand, smarted under a thousand stings of spitefulness as a result of this disturbance of her plans. It meant a great deal to her to be seen with the Wheatons that evening, more than she could pos¬ sibly impress upon him. To have to decline the honor and thereby lose the advantage she had gained because of the caprice of one who put his own interests before everything else was bad enough; but to have the Wheatons suspect—they who viewed everything with fastidious eyes—that her husband was one of those banal creatures who saw nothing elevating or inspiring in the drama was humiliating in the extreme.

He had seldom met the Wheatons socially—at least not often enough to form any opinion, and conse¬ quently he could not claim to know them. On one occa¬ sion they met in the Park. It was one day the preceding summer, during the Flower Show. Bert naturally fell in with Kelso, and together they began a tour of the gardens. Edith fancied they were getting on splendidly, until he told her afterwards of his impressions of the man. He said he did not like his annoying habit of asking so many personal questions; it seemed to him that the fellow was a prig, one who was pleading ig¬ norance to everything for the shrewd purpose of draw¬ ing another out. And since then he had avoided Kelso Wheaton whenever possible.

“I think you do not want to meet them at all,” she said now, tartly.

“Why, yes, I do,” he replied. “They are all right as far as I know. What makes you say that?”

She looked at him. w r ith steady eyes. It was almost a menacing look. He did not flinch.

“You don’t think I am inventing a pretext for staying away?” he continued.

“I don’t know. Some men are capable of anything. You told me you thought Mr. Wheaton was a snob-”

“Did I? I should not have said that. How many times have I met him ? Only once or twice ! Certainly not often enough to form an opinion of him.”

“Nevertheless, you are prejudiced against him.”

“If I am, it is because he is not our kind.”

“What of that?”

“He doesn’t notice us because of our equality. The difference of interest and ambition that exists between us is too great to admit any degree of friendship. He has inherited position and wealth and spends most of his time indulging in the luxuries of the rich—clubs, sports, travels. We are not in the same class.”

“Well,” she sighed, “I am not so fastidious. We do not have to be in their class it seems, for they have made important advances to us already. It is no small honor to be asked to share their box with them this evening, and I think them pretty decent.”

It was in college that Edith had first met Evelyn Wheaton, but they did not become friends there. Not¬ withstanding the fact that both girls were from the same city, neither of them knew the other until intro¬ duced on the campus. Edith had often heard of Evelyn, of course, for everybody in Shefford knew her by repu¬ tation as the daughter of Nat Wheaton, the sewingmachine man. For over fifty years the Wheaton Manu¬ facturing Company was the leading industry in Shef¬ ford, and for the last twenty-five years the name of Wheaton had been one to conjure with. Its proud possessor dictated the policy of the city as mayor for ten years and that of his party until the day of his death seven years before. He had wielded an influence that smacked of absolutism. He made and unmade men in a single day. He drove the Tramway Company into the hands of a receiver when they refused to accept transfers from another line. His friends mourned him for days and lined the curb as his cortege passed, while his enemies, fearful of him even in death, secluded themselves in doorways or hid behind their shutters, and secretly rejoiced.

Shortly before his death he had disposed of his in¬ terest in the corporation that bore his name, and retired, to West Shefford, where he built a magnificent home. Far back from the highway it loomed, a pretentious structure of brick and limestone, an object of interest, having little in common with the abodes which stood more modestly on either side of the road. The setting of the Wheaton mansion left nothing to be desired in the way of privacy. It was an artistic creation, notable even for affluent Shefford. Behind lay wide level meadows where the sluggish Pequabuck overflowed in time of freshet, and where the glimmering shadows lay half asleep between the windows of the house and the distant hills. Before the domes and towers, the city glistened and glinted in the afternoon sunshine. Main Street crossed in front, at the terminus of an avenue shaded by giant poplars, and leading from the front door. Forest-clad hills and open fields enveloped the countryside, where herds of cattle grazed peacefully in the midst of veritable gardens of color. In the summer, the windows looked out upon hills and vales aglow with red maple and willow and acres and acres of flowers scattered thickly in graceful disorder over a verdant carpet; in the winter the softly falling snows afforded another panorama of unrivaled beauty, its whiteness broken only by the sturdy hills climbing sky¬ ward, the pines and cedar-bushes making great, black spots along their downy sides.