The Sunday Bee
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MAGAZINE SECTION
VOL. 52—NO. 34. OMAHA. SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 4, 1923. FIVE CENTS
The Bottom of the Barrel By Richard Washburn Child J
Would the “Other Woman” Want the
, Husband if She Knew Him
z \ as the Wife Does?
<
WHEN Sirs. Elbridge was not at work in the laboratory
or with her children, in the course of her routine
plan, Bhe was a good deal of a girl. She neglected
that fact. It served her well when she had to withstand
►the great shock of her life. She was slender, tall, without
artificial aids to beauty, and ahe had that honest kind of
loveliness which one believes is admired by dogs and chil
dren, birds and butterflies, as'well as men. At 10 she bid
fair to be always young.
Some one has said that Mary was a “strange bird.’’ No
4oubt it is difficult for the person who said it to conceive a
Before he had found that his_ Income permitted him to
leave his father's old Nassau street law office with the re
liable staff and devote his life to sharpening pencils and
beginning various novels, he had not been an ^Rilorer of
personalities. If Mary had regretted seeing Billy leave the
law. she kept silent because she was willing to concede
that a human being had a right to carve out his own des
tinies. Billy had acquired that magnificent height of belief
to the extent that he considered that Mary's plea in behalf
of the servants, the children, and herself that he should
get up In the morning and ho on time for meals constituted
an evil, dominating influence, devastating to his right to
grow and expand and to find the sunlight of self, as he
called it.
He was not odious at all, according to Mary's notion.
She loved him deaHv. He was the center of her universe,
not because if lie had died she could not have gone on living
and doing pretty well, but somehow her own ambition to do
canlcally. Her pillow was wet with tears and she turned It
over in the morning no he would not know she hid U<*en
awake. She closed her fiats as she made prefer * to play
with the children. She thought wicked thoughts about re
volvers She felt as a tigress Is supposed t * * fe«*l And she
was ashamed because, perhaps, the tigress knows more
about the truth of love and the family and the tiger than
human beings know.
It was not the rock she had called “their island' which
first attracted her conscious attention to tin* part that Edith
Barston, with her tilted nose, her sad. meditative eyes, and
her hair curled under so that it looked like bobbed hair, was
going to play in Mary’s life: It was a change in Billy.
One day came when, at Mary’s suggestion, he went along
the cliff walk, through the turnstile to invite Edith to
come over to meet at dinner some people who were coming
out for the night. Billy did not return soon* In fact, it was
after luncheon when he came back.
“I'd like to pull your damned liair out by the roots.’’
young woman who could achieve, without beating the bass
drum. In that respect, Mary failed to meet the supposed
necessities of feminism because she failed to make a clamor.
Her formula for living, as much as one could discern It
front her management of life, was this:
"Create as much as possible, pay enough attention to the
experience of ages after ages of mankind nnd not too
much to doctrines which promise men progress nnd happi
ness in a hurry. Above all, mere discontent may be showy,
but it's wasteful."
That was her notion of how a woman’s life, or a man's,
might be guided.
Her surprise was vnst when she discovered that \\ ilham
Carr Elbridge was in love with another lady.
Busy with tho children, and busy when she could find
the time with a new lot of books reporting various post
war investigations of the ductless glands and the theory of
immunity, Just received from Germany, nnd finding her
pleasures in the tints of sunsets behind the sea and the
aromas of the pines, she was not alert. She absorbed the
situation rather than received it in one piece; it came upon
her somewhat like a slow dawn. She diagnosed it little
by little a3 one diagnoses typhoid fever; It cannot be an
nounced ns identified merely because there is some slight
disorder and some slight degree of temperature.
Edith Barston occupied the next shore estate, and Mary
had to admit to herself that from the first of June, when
Billy and the two children nnd she had come to their leased
villa, the particular peculiarities and character of Miss
Barston had not engaged ns much of her attention ns one
human being may be thought to owe to another who hun
gers and subtly calls for attention.
Edith, who was 30, had inherited money and tubercu
losis, had kept the first and after a time had suppressed
the second. Good for her! The process had left her thin,
wispy, meditative, slow in movement, with a kind or bone.*
less grace observed in Burne-Jones figures.
She was a good swimmer. She used the same little
beach in the same pretty little cove nnd though Mary was
oven a better swimmer, Mary stayed and paddled with the
children. Edith used to invite Billy gently to swim out to
the rock where the two often oat for a sun bath with their
feet in (he waving sea weed. There, apparently, they ex
changed ideas nl>out life, at first the impersonal Ideas.
The rook had never had significance for Mary and it was
even a shook to herself one bright sunny day when she said
to little Jane, "Daddy will he late for luncheon if he stays
any longer on their island." It was absurd to voice ob
jection to Billy’s finding such treasure as tie might in any
mind nr soul be wished to explore.
well and have the children do well was always associated
with Billy. There was a certain fundamental animal In
stinct of love in it. and in addition there was a sense of ad
herence to a family unit, where after all the stupidities, the
unreasoning slavery, the suppression of self, a willingness
to play the game and a reprehensible loyalty to the others
created the most useful, forward going, productive institu
tion which men and women for ages past have been trying
to smash, substitute for, or commiserate.
Mary, in behalf of this institution, went to the seashore
in tho summer, where her work and her energies suffered
most. She herself "preferred the mountains. There was
Billy, however, and the children, and though they had never
been to the mountains, once, when she mentioned it, Billy
had a tantrum about her selfishness in wanting him to go
where they would be no 1" spiratlon to start various suc
cessive beginnings of urr.inished novels. Tantrums, how
ever, Mary knew, usually took place when people love each
other. And they loved each other—certainly, until Billy
began to inquire why and pick life's fabric Into its separate
threads.
Then Mary had said: "Uo to the devil, Billy. I)6n't
choose the tallest trees when you bark under them. Take
the saplings that are your own size. The reason why Jane
sometimes had that look of Clod In her face that sometimes
appears in yours is no greater mystery than why I love
you. You've got a good mind and I am glad it explores,
but you'd better start for the north or south polo of under
standing rather than advertise that your next whirl will be
around the rings of Saturn. All men and women, even Soc
rates, are more or less limited to being darn fools. And
honestly, as much as T admire your mind, I’d never pick
you to know it all.”
Billy laughed—a handsome person. Mary would have
liked to throw her arms around his bronzed young neck so
those arms could tell him things that she couldn't. He said.
"I never expect to know it all.”
She grew serious for a moment. "Because your foun
dation isn't very good, Billy," she said. "A good founda
tion for exploring the mysteries of life better be built of
Aristotle and Confucius, Iluxley, Spencer and Saint Thomas
Aquinas, and so on rather than-”
She stopped because he scowled and said, "I never as
serted the modern writers of revolt, fiction or otherwise,
were perfect. But they deal with a world which has
changed. ’
Mary took one of the characteristic gazes Into eternity of
which her gray eyes appeared capable and said rather sad
ly. "I wonder how much the world does change."
few events had come which made her world change vol
“Eating out?” Mary asked.
“Certainly not!” he replied. Then as lie looked Into tha
mirror in the hallway and saw the crumb on Ills cheek he
added, “She offered me a cruller—a brown cruller—with
sugar on it. I haven't had a cruller since I left boarding
school." He laughed lightly.
Then the irritation swept over him. All mated beings
who love each other recognize it. He said. “For heaven *
sake, Mary, must we always be messing around discussing
trivialities? I didn't start this discussion. What’* the fuss
about? Life is intolerable!"
He was not hungry: he said that lie was very hungry.
Naturally honest, he felt that Ids snoopy lie would not
quickly stop sagging down like a gallstone in liis self-respect
until surgery took It out. Mary knew he felt it. He had
had a little stolen luncheon with Edith. Perhaps he had
not even sat down; rcchaps he had just stood around her
dainty table, playfully; perhaps Edith, who had an impish
ness, had romped with him about the table in that simula
tion pf childish care free spirit which restless husbands or
wives think would go on forever, or at least for a year,
if they could l>e with one "bf the cunning personalities day
in and day out.
Billy told Mary that he did not consider Edith was any
thing but rather plain, and this, being Inconsistent with all
he had heretofore said, appeared to Mary to Indicate that
her husband, by his absurd strategy of saying things de
rogatory to Edith, was not only committing petty larceny
In the cash drawer of their partnership confidence, hut that
he was, as an incidental, doing It at Miss Barston’s expense.
All that he said, indeed, about Edith he said with a skill in
duplicity which shocked his wife. But above all. there was
a lack of dlglnity in one who failed so miserably in an at
tempt to deceive, even though the attempt extended to de
ceit of himself. Billy was usually profuse in his reports of
conversations held with others. He never reported what
Edith had said to him and still less what he had said to
Edith. Mary could see that whatever the June weeks
had made of a relationship between them was their own .
private preserve and she was not invited even to peck
through the knotholes in the fence.
Mary thought thnt evil consequences come from the dis
coveries of such subleties. Tit breaks in family life may I,*
painful, hut they are out in the o|>en. at least. Everybody
. concerned can be told to either shoot or give up the gun.
Taken early, the answer usually Is that it Is best not to
shoot.
She know there was one evil mnseequeneo. The nr
cursed thing appeared at snee and it would not dow i 1'
pulled all day at her skirts and plucked her flng-rs as sao
