Radio digest (1922)

Si Incompatible (Continued from page 24) out counting them as loss — all were beautiful seasons if they were Love's seasons. But there was something not beautiful the matter with her and Sid. OF COURSE there were no children! And a pang shot through her — a familiar little pang. Probably that was the bottom trouble. Sid was disappointed— she guessed that, though he hid his discontent. As for that no one dreamed. Sid no more than anyone else, how deeply and acutely she, herself, felt her childlessness. Yet, withal, didn't they have enough in each other for happiness? No, evidently not. But why not? If, for instance, she acted with men as Bess Wandell acted with men, or if Sid were unfaithful to her as Charlie Hamblin was flagrantly unfaithful to his Mabel; or if she were disloyal to him merely in spirit as Louise Smith was disloyal to Johnny, forever talking about how it was she who had "made" her husband and implying that her superior talents had lifted him from the ditch of mediocrity: or if Sid got drunk and abused her, or even if he were insignificant but insufferably pompus and smug like Fanny Munn's husband — if there were some such concrete "if,'' then there would be some understanding of yet one more disappointment in marriage. But was everyone disappointed at the best — everyone but the dreadful people who expected nothing? W as married happiness— married love — at the best a mere negation of violently expressed unhappiness — merely not getting abusivelydrunk or being abusively unfaithful or things like that? But no — a million times no! Not with people who had loved each other as she and Sid had loved each other! AND then, catching that mental past tense, she cried out to herself that Sid did love her yet — she knew she loved him. But then she said to herself that if a woman seven years married has to assert her husband's love to her own heart, she's not so sure of it as she has a right to be. But she chased away that thought, and sought to recapture the surging softness and warmth called up by the sight of her Sid when he was a boy. And it did come back to her, that tide of ineffable tenderness. And, swimming in that tenderness, she told herself that, after all, she had been exaggerating their failure to find happiness. Had been building hobgoblins out of shadows. Making trifles too momentous. The little rifts on the surface after all hadn't mattered — there were bound to be little rifts, occasionally, between any human beings who had to live in close day-by-day contact. The only thing that mattered was not the rifts but whether the persons still loved each other. And she and Sid still loved each other — yes, oh yes! She leaned closer to the window, so close that her forehead brushed the screen. Outside the crickets were at their evening song and back of her a clock was loudly, lazily ticking the seconds. The sounds seemed to intensify the pervasive quiet. Outside, inside, the hush hung heavy. No sound of human voices to enliven, to make less tedious, her waiting — not even children's voices. Her thoughts turned and wounded her with a memory sudfien and with no apparent direct connection: of how Sid had set aside one big bright room for a nursery — when they first took the house. Rut that big bright room had long since been given over to other purposes. She and Sid never ipoke of those old hopes, and Amelie never discovered her disappointment, never admitted it, to anyone. BI T there was the deepest reason why she hated certain other childless women of their set who deliberately avoided domestic encumbrances to liveliness— she must accept a standing that put her with them; she could not cry her distaste for their ideas. Here lay a hidden and her most specific reason for disclaiming kinship with that blithe and careless "bunch" so prjzed by Sid. But Sid had no more idea of all this than a stranger. Curiously she didn't want Sid to suspect how much she cared. It seemed to her she could not bear anything that might lift the curtain on how much he cared. W hile, as a fact, Sid suffered no such disappointment as hers. Possessing Amelie he thought he had more than was his due, anyway. That the subject was closed between them was part of their misfortune. Amelie was still waiting for him, cherishing that softened and tender mood, when Sid got home. Her first disappointment was because he didn't come alone. He had brought the out-of-town business acquaintance with him; Sid liked to feel free to bring a friend home to dinner without notice, and Amelie liked him to show his freedom — not every prosperous husband has it. Yet, somehow, tonight — But she tried to be gracious to this Mr. Jenkins of Sid's, and, when she tried, she could be gracious, indeed; only her feelings beneath remained the same. It came out that Mr. Jenkins was a golf enthusiast and that this was Sid's reason for bringing him to Fair Haven — so he might play over the Club's excellent course the next day, though Sid himself couldn't, hadn't the time. But he would take the visitor over to the Club dance tonight and introduce him to some of the fellows and arrange a game. TO AMELIE, feeling as she was feeling then, as she had been feeling all afternoon — vaguely wistful and reminiscently regretful and wanting only to be with Sid — the suggestion of a frolicsome evening at the clubhouse, and especially with Sid suggesting it in that enthusiastic way, came as a wet-blanket. And because her tenderness was so suddenly dampened, so terribly dampened, she didn't want Sid to suspect the mood the day and that boyish picture had called up. Why bare her feelings? — he was obviously eager for this frolic; the time was past when just being with her constituted his most enjoyable "good time." The Dictated Letter A LL might have ended differently if Sidney had not had his stenographer write his letters to Amelie. He had injured his hand, which had prevented him from using a pen. But Amelie did not know this. She thought he was indifferent, so the breach was widened another notch. Follow this intensely human story, Incompatible, to its conclusion in the August Radio Digest Yet, when alone witfi him in their room, she demurred about the evening's plan: "I'm sorry we've got to go to that dance tonight." "Sorry you're sorry, dear — but I don't see any way out of it. Jenkins brought his evening clothes — I told him to. Then, as I said, it's a good chance to get him fixed up for tomorrow." She hesitated a second; then: "You put it off on Mr. Jenkins — but you want to go to the dance yourself!" She forced banter into a little laugh, but there was a quaver of something else under the banter. It was the wounded sentiment of a tender mood taking itself out in a mask of pettiness. But what could Sid see but the pettiness? And Amelie was not given to the petty or the pettyish. He answered matter-of-factly : "Of course 1 want to go — I like to dance and I'm in just the mood tonight." Underneath the matter-of-factness was something a little hard, a little cold, and almost hidden beneath geniality, but not hidden from Amelie. It amounted to a I critical comment on her attitude, and 5 she — she was only acting to be loved! b To be assured of his love. So she an I swered with a weary indifference of tone | — the eternally foolish feminine — she J answered: "You're generally in that mood, it seems." "See here, Amelie," and, to add to its defensiveness, his tone took on an impatience because of the need to be defensive, "let's not start that kind of thing now. Don't start acting abused because I want you to go out and have a good time — you know you like to dance as well as anybody!" "I do like to dance," she admitted. "But I like other things, too. And I confess that, at times, I get sort of fed up with people who think life's nothing but dancing and hunting a good time." I She was faintly, gently supercilious ! about it — oh, such a slight, lady-like | shade of superciliousness, and that was t thanks to that strangled-down warmth \ inside her. But Sid was chilled, re I buffed. And hurt — that tone of hers had | sufficed to stir, as a similar demeanor i had stirred more than once, a well of | bitterness deep and secret within him: Amelie scorned "the bunch," but that I wasn't it; the thing that put that edge on her scorn, which used to be so amiably slight and humorous, was that she had learned to scorn him with the rest! I Why not, indeed? They were the ones ! that were his kind, he supposed, even if he had put one over on Amelie when he I got her to marry him. HE WAS hurt as if he had been stabbed. It was not the sense of Amelie's superiority — because Sid, in his p genuine humility, had always deemed Amelie high above him; but the suspi ' cion that she was cognizant of his in I feriority. That had been something, this suspi j cion, he had been fighting away from through all the little rifts and jars which had marred the last two years. She had J got taxed and bored with him. There is no feeling in life more " wretched than that of feeling oneself j belittled by the adored one. And this j feeling, layered onto his own self-deprecation, had been recurrently making Sid Fletcher unhappy. So unhappy that all he could do was to put on a deceptive uncaring front and withdraw into himself. YVithdrawals to conceal the hurt inside him; and which, according to his idea of his own lacks, must last till she made some sign, gave him a cue to show I himself the lover again. And, of course, to tide himself over, he must hurl himself the more hilariously into those dis |j