the little pale image of goodness so frequently seen sitting in cutter’s car before the bank waiting for him around five o’clock in the afternoon was what remained of the original helen two years after he had relinquished his plan to live in new york.
keeping an entirely good resolution may be strengthening to character, but it is fearfully damaging to feminine beauty. for one thing such women lose the sense of clothes. helen had known how to dress in the happy, wild-rose period of her youth; but how can you keep up the flaunting, flowing sweetness of your draperies when you are no longer a girl to be won, but have become a wife who has been reduced to her duties and her virtues?
still, things had not been as bad for her as she had expected they would be. george was away from home now much of the time. he had interests in new york and spent at least a part of every month there. but she heard from him regularly, usually a wire, sometimes a brief note. when he was at home, it was the same old routine,[154] except that he spent more time at the golf and country club.
the truth was that helen got on his nerves frightfully with her silence and dutifulness and patience. the impeccable wife is a difficult proposition, if you tackle it. cutter instinctively avoided the issue. he accepted helen for this awfully “better” woman than he had bargained for. there was none of that human “worse” in her, so amply provided for in the marriage ceremony, with which to vary the monotony of their life together. often he wished for a stormy scene, such as by nature married people are entitled to have. if he was irritable, she left him alone. if he was calm, she would come and sit and sew a fine seam in a sweet silence that was perfectly maddening. if he flung the paper he was reading on the floor, slammed his feet down and groaned, she would look up at him, then drop her eyes once more to this seam—or she would rise and leave the room noiselessly.
good heavens! he could not stand it, meaning “her.” why didn’t she complain that he neglected her? why didn’t she say something, show some spirit? why didn’t she appeal to his conscience? that was what a wife was for—one thing, at least. if she would only show some[155] fight, he might regain control of himself; as it was, he was slipping. why couldn’t she see that and stop him? he really wanted to slow up; but how was a man to do it with his wife letting him go like this?
cutter was the kind of man who would eventually account for his transgression by saying if he had married another sort of woman he might have been a better man. in that case, you may be sure, if his wife had married a totally different kind of man, she would have been a happier woman.
meanwhile helen was prepared for the worst. this is a terrific preparation, but sometimes the only one a woman can make; and it leaves her in a singularly placid state of mind. if she had understood the situation, she might have behaved differently. but she did not understand cutter.
the woman who knows only one man never knows much about him. to understand a husband, you must do a lot of collateral reading of mankind. he is all of them, from the best to the worst. you are not so apt then to be mystified by his various manifestations. and if you have any sense of the proper courage of your sex, you will act according to his symptoms, not your own sanity, even if it is to burst into tears[156] and cry: “undone! undone! oh, my god!”
he will fall for it and react every time; because god, upon whom you have just called, no doubt having your emergencies in view, has created men so that almost without exception they have no defense against a weeping woman.
at the same time it is the worst possible governing principle not to vary your tears with laughter, tyranny and some sort of lovely unreasonableness. men cannot endure a perfectly logical and sane woman. she is too much like a petticoated edition of themselves. they want action. you must keep your ball rolling, you must convince your husband of your mental inferiority and of your tender superiority.
helen, poor girl, was not that much smarter than her husband. she was straight. she lacked the dearer deviousness of her sex, and, within her limits, was utterly all to the good. whether a state of unmitigated morality is profitable is a thing i have always wanted to know. and in the course of a long life, the only answer i have ever been able to find is that any state bordering on immorality, or unmoralness, is sure to prove unprofitable. the difference between these two equations offered the only light at the time on helen’s future.
