The Younger Set | Page 9

and when I saw that it was turning out
perfectly, I thought it better to wait until you could return and hear all
about it from me, because one can't write that sort of thing--"
"Nina!"
"What, dear?" she said, startled.
"Who the dickens is Eileen?"
"Philip! You are precisely like Austin; you grow impatient of
preliminary details when I'm doing my very best attempting to explain
just as clearly as I can. Now I will go on and say that Eileen is Molly
Erroll's daughter, and the courts appointed Austin and me guardians for
her and for her brother Gerald."
"Oh!"
"Now is it clear to you?"
"Yes," he said, thinking of the tragedy which had left the child so
utterly alone in the world, save for her brother and a distant kinship by
marriage with the Gerards.
For a while he sat brooding, arms loosely folded, immersed once more
in his own troubles.
"It seems a shame," he said, "that a family like ours, whose name has
always spelled decency, should find themselves entangled in the very

things their race has always hated and managed to avoid. And through
me, too."
"It was not your fault, Phil."
"No, not the divorce part. Do you suppose I wouldn't have taken any
kind of medicine before resorting to that! But what's the use; for you
can try as you may to keep your name clean, and then you can fold
your arms and wait to see what a hopeless fool fate makes of you."
"But no disgrace touches you, dear," she said tremulously.
"I've been all over that, too," he said with quiet bitterness. "You are
partly right; nobody cares in this town. Even though I did not defend
the suit, nobody cares. And there's no disgrace, I suppose, if nobody
cares enough even to condone. Divorce is no longer noticed; it is a
matter of ordinary occurrence--a matter of routine in some sets. Who
cares?--except decent folk? And they only think it's a pity--and
wouldn't do it themselves. The horrified clamour comes from outside
the social registers and blue books; we know they're right, but it doesn't
affect us. What does affect us is that we were the decent folk who
permitted ourselves the luxury of being sorry for others who resorted to
divorce as a remedy but wouldn't do it ourselves! . . . Now we've done
it and--"
"Phil! I will not have you feel that way."
"What way?"
"The way you feel. We are older than we were--everybody is older--the
world is, too. What we were brought up to consider impossible--"
"What we were brought up to consider impossible was what kept me up
to the mark out there, Nina." He made a gesture toward the East. "Now,
I come back here and learn that we've all outgrown those ideas--"
"Phil! I never meant that."

He said: "If Alixe found that she cared for Ruthven, I don't blame her.
Laws and statutes can't govern such matters. If she found she no longer
cared for me, I could not blame her. But two people, mismated, have
only one chance in this world--to live their tragedy through with
dignity. That is absolutely all life holds for them. Beyond that, outside
of that dead line--treachery to self and race and civilisation! That is my
conclusion after a year's experience in hell." He rose and began to pace
the floor, fingers worrying his moustache. "Law? Can a law, which I do
not accept, let me loose to risk it all again with another woman?"
She said slowly, her hands folded in her lap: "It is well you've come to
me at last. You've been turning round and round in that wheeled cage
until you think you've made enormous progress; and you haven't. Dear,
listen to me; what you honestly believe to be unselfish and
high-minded adherence to principle, is nothing but the circling
reasoning of a hurt mind--an intelligence still numbed from shock, a
mental and physical life forced by sheer courage into mechanical
routine. . . . Wait a moment; there is nobody else to say this to you; and
if I did not love you I would not interfere with this great mistake you
are so honestly making of your life, and which, perhaps, is the only
comfort left you. I say, 'perhaps,' for I do not believe that life holds
nothing happier for you than the sullen content of martyrdom."
"Nina!"
"I am right!" she said, almost fiercely; "I've been married thirteen years
and I've lost that fear of men's portentous judgments which all girls
outgrow one day. And do you think I am going to acquiesce in this
attitude of yours toward life? Do you think I can't distinguish between a
tragical mistake and a mistaken tragedy? I