Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
1
It was an ironic coincidence that the same cause that killed the last bit of struggling love Stephen had for Stella (if indeed love it had ever been) should also bind him to her more closely.
Suddenly in the midst of Stella's first year of social success in Milhampton, she found herself facing the dismaying possibility that she might soon become a mother. She didn't want to! Not now! It would be a terrible tragedy just when she was making such headway in Milhampton. It would wipe her off the social map for a whole year, or more! When the possibility became a certainty, it seemed to Stephen that all there was left sweet and fine in Stella disintegrated suddenly and completely into futile and unbeautiful protest.
She fought the frightening fact day after day, night after night, with violent attacks of crying, with uncontrolled fits of rage, self-pity, and despair, as if in frenzied resistance lay possible escape. Her one desire was to escape—somehow, anyhow, from the horrible trap that had snapped on her, and held her in its grasp.
She talked in a way during this time that made Stephen want to go into another room and close the door. He did, sometimes. Her complaints were worded in the parlance that came easiest to her tongue. She was in no mood then to pick words and choose phrases. All that Stephen held most sacred and precious about marriage went to pieces under the constant fire.
He took many long lonely walks into the open country around Milhampton that fall to escape from Stella, to get out of sight and sound of her and purify himself, if he could, under the open sky. His thoughts were bitter ones as he tramped and tramped. It seemed as if life was determined to grind its heel upon him, and crush him. He didn't believe in fate; he didn't believe ill-fortune or good-fortune was planned and sent to helpless victims. He believed stanchly in the unchanging law of causation. But oh, it did make a man wish there was some other reason than his own fault, for disaster following him, wherever he went, whatever he did. It had been in an attempt to escape the horror of his father's last act that he had come to Milhampton. And now the horror of finding himself married to a woman he did not love, had never loved (it was to get away from Mrs. Bean's boarding-house that he had married) was his to bear. He wished he might go back to Mrs. Bean's boarding-house. There are some kinds of unloveliness more difficult to endure than mere dirt and grime. The apartment was no longer a refuge.
Stephen made no effort to reason with Stella. In the beginning he told her briefly, sternly, that she must accept the fact of the coming child, unwelcome as it was to her (unwelcome as it was, therefore, to him). They must both accept it. There was no escape. Absolutely. Having delivered himself of this dictum, he treated her as kindly as he knew how, as he would a sick and unreasonable child—tolerated, indulged, and endured.
Stella's protestations quieted down. Her attacks of crying and abandonment to despair grew less violent, less frequent. They disappeared completely after a month or so. That was nature's way. Stephen knew that no emotion can continue long in intensity, in the consciousness of a human being. It runs a course, like a disease. Mercifully. Recuperation begins its gentle work, once facts are comprehended and accepted. Stephen expected that in time Stella would acquiesce and submit to "her inevitable." But he did not expect her acquiescence and submission to become interest and delight.
One evening in January she showed Stephen a little dress she had been working on in secret, daytimes, when he was absent, she explained. As she held it up by the arms for him to see, she gurgled with amusement and pleased satisfaction.
"Isn't 'he' cute?" she laughed delightedly.
Stephen stared at the little dress, amazed. Why, six weeks ago Stella had declared she wouldn't take a stitch for the baby! He couldn't refrain from reminding her of that.
"Well, what of it?" she shrugged. "I said all sorts of things then, in the beginning, when I was scared, I suppose. Oh, Stephen," she laughed good-naturedly, "you don't know beans about women. Why, I'm getting quite crazy about the baby now!"
Stephen looked at her sharply. Did the maternal instinct come alive suddenly in some women, like that?
"Really?"
"Certainly," she assured him lightly. "Of course it will tie me down, terribly, for a while, but Myrtle says" (she was constantly quoting Myrtle to Stephen), "Myrtle says I'd be awfully out of things in the long run, if I didn't ever have a child. All the young married set talk babies—at least the women; and, after all, it is sort of fun to dress the cunning little things up, and send them out rolling, with a nurse-girl. Myrtle has got a baby. She dresses her in darling things, and Phyllis" (Phyllis was often quoted to Stephen, too) "told me something is going to happen to her next summer. I'm really quite in the swim."
Stephen turned away, no longer dismayed. Only a little more disillusioned.
2
Laurel was born in June. Stephen named her Laurel—at least it was the name he applied to her the first time he saw her. He had come across some clumps of mountain-laurel in bud a day or two before, when out on one of his long tramps. The buds were clusters of sticky little spurs of deep pink and red. The first morning the trained nurse brought Laurel to Stephen for inspection, the baby was wrapped up in layers upon layers of flannel. Only the tip of her little pink head was showing.
"Hello, you little mountain-laurel bud," Stephen had said to her, at a loss to know what to say.
He never would have called her a laurel-bud again. It was the nurse who insisted upon the term. Every morning when she took the baby to Stephen for inspection (a ceremony she never failed to perform), she remarked, "Here's your little mountain-laurel bud, Mr. Dallas!"
Laurel's real name was Hildegarde—it was as Hildegarde that she was enrolled on the city's records—but she was never called anything but Laurel and "Lollie," and sometimes "Lolliepops." Myrtle Holland had suggested Hildegarde to Stella. It was a name that had style and distinction, she had said. Stella fully intended to adopt it as soon as Lollie was old enough to go to school. But by the time Lollle was old enough to go to school, she had ideas of her own upon the subject. She didn't like Hildegarde.
"It's big and ugly, and has corners," she announced.
During the first few weeks of Laurel's existence Stella gloried much more in the pleasing curves her own figure assumed than in the exquisite beauty of Laurel's perfect body. Oh, yes, it was a cute little thing, she acknowledged, but she had wanted a boy—always preferred the opposite sex. She nursed the baby for a week or two, but she warned the doctor, with a gay little nod of her head, she wasn't going to be "a cow" once she got up. How Stephen had cringed when she referred to herself as "a cow." Honestly it was funny how the English language could hurt Stephen.
Laurel was barely five weeks old when Stella donned an evening gown—("Look at me, Stephen," she had exclaimed delightedly; "I'm a perfect sylph.")—and went to an evening dance.
She didn't look pale and tired and wistful, the way most mothers of young babies looked, and go home early. "See," her bright cheeks announced, her ecstatic manner proclaimed, "it hasn't made any difference. I can dance just as well, I can flirt just as well!" She and her partner had been one of the half-dozen couples still dancing on the ballroom floor to the music of a solitary piano at 3 A.M., when the janitor began turning off the lights. Stephen, waiting patiently below, outside the ladles' dressing-room, had been the parent who was wondering—and wondering bitterly too—if the baby had slept through.
Stella returned to the arena of her ambitions with a determination to make up for lost time as quickly and as emphatically as possible. And Stephen returned to the valley of shame and humiliation. During this period the cloak he wore to cover the shivering nakedness of his mortification concealed at the same time much of his natural camaraderie. It was impossible for him to participate in mild hilarities of whatever kind, in Milhampton, under the constant ban of his relationship to one whose hilarity was so often overdone. He became extremely subdued in manner, reserved, short of speech, disinclined to respond to friendly approaches. Some people in Milhampton called him glum and ill-humored.
Outside Milhampton, however, there was nothing glum and ill-humored about Stephen Dallas. In another city he met amiability more than half way. His old charm, of which he possessed no small amount, returned to him shining and bright the minute that he escaped his relationship to Stella. He bore himself with more confidence and effective self-esteem with business associates, too, who were far enough removed from Milhampton to know nothing of his home life. Every week's or two weeks' absence from Stella became oases of refreshment to Stephen. Mr. Palmer, accompanying Stephen on one of his business trips, had witnessed the metamorphosis, and he opened up as many business opportunities out of town for his protégé, as possible. Stephen's reputation for ability in the law spread.
The year Laurel began going to school, a New York law firm asked Stephen to become one of its members. Mr. Palmer advised Stephen to accept the invitation. It would mean, of course, a loss to him, not only a business loss but a personal loss too. Stephen had come to seem to him almost like a son. "But go," he said, "go. It's your big chance, my boy. Go."
It happened that, during the time that Stephen had the New York proposition under consideration, Stella was carrying on a rather more obvious flirtation than usual with a man of a very offensive personality to Stephen. Stephen had told Stella how distasteful this particular man was to him; but Stella had paid no heed to his objections. Stephen was always objecting.
The man's name was Alfred Munn. He was a stranger in Milhampton. There had sprung up in Milhampton an interest in horseback riding the preceding summer. The River Club had filled its stables with a dozen or more Kentucky thoroughbreds obtained from a Southern hostelry. They were somewhat worn-out animals for the most part, but they were safe and steady for beginners, much safer and steadier in fact than their owner—or keeper. (It was never definitely known which Alfred Munn was.)
Alfred Munn became almost as much of a craze at the River Club as the sport he taught. It was difficult to get an hour's instruction from him, if you hadn't engaged it weeks in advance. He was busy every day from six in the morning till six at night, instructing women and children mostly. Certain women of the younger married set began paying Alfred Munn ridiculous attention. It was discovered that it was not only on the back of a horse that he was skillful, and the epitome of grace and rhythm; he could also excel on the ballroom floor. One of the younger married women, bolder than her sisters, invited him to a River Club dance. He was soon attending all the River Club dances. He was taken up by a certain set of women in Milhampton like some new exotic food.
In spite of the report that he belonged to an aristocratic Southern family of reduced financial circumstances, most of the women who paid him attention were aware of his lack of breeding. They were simply amusing themselves. But Stella couldn't see why Alfred Munn wasn't a gentleman, she told Stephen. Other women like Edith and Rosamond (it was Edith and Rosamond then, instead of Myrtle and Phyllis) didn't seem to find anything so horribly objectionable about him. Why in the world should Stephen expect her to be so particular!
Stephen used to find Alfred Munn sitting with Stella over a kettle and tea-cups, in the living-room, when he came home in the late afternoon. Stephen and Stella had moved from the apartment by then, and were living in a detached house with a lawn and garden.
Afternoon tea was an effort and affectation with most of the young married women in Milhampton, in those days. It was served on low tabourettes, before open fires, in overheated and underlighted living-rooms. It was the Milhampton custom, at that time, for the hostess to dangle a perforated silver ball, filled with tea-leaves in individual cups of hot water, and to inquire, while dangling, as to the cream and lemon and sugar. When Stephen found Stella coquettishly dangling her silver ball for Alfred Munn, as he sat comfortably ensconced in one of the big Dallas arm-chairs, it was more than irritation he felt. It was disgust.
Why, the man left his teaspoon in his cup! He had the habit of drawing air through the spaces between his teeth after eating! And Stella could endure him! When he was not disguised in his riding-clothes, his coarseness was obvious in such details as shirts and waistcoats. He wore conspicuous jewelry too! On his little finger there appeared usually a huge gold ring with red, white, and blue stones in it. Occasionally he wore a gold scarf-pin representing Psyche asleep in a crescent moon. He was that sort of man. Sometimes Stephen found Alfred Munn smoking his cigarettes, handling his precious books. Sometimes he found him fondling Laurel! Laurel didn't seem to object to it. Why should she?—Stephen asked bitterly. Stella was her mother.
4
The reason Laurel didn't seem to object to Alfred Munn's fondling her was for the sake of a marvelous watch he carried. He used to show it to her if she would come and sit in his lap. Laurel never forgot the wonders of that watch. When she grew up she thought of them whenever she thought of Alfred Munn.
It was a gold watch, big and heavy, and very thick. There was a horse's head engraved on the back of it with a diamond eye that twinkled. His bridle was studded with tiny red stones.
Beneath the horse's head on the inside of the back cover (which Mr. Munn had to pry open with his thick thumb-nail) was a picture of another horse. It was a pure white horse with a lady in short skirts standing on tiptoes on his back!
Underneath the white horse, way, way inside, next to the little gold wheels and blue screw-heads, was another picture. It was a colored picture. It was a picture of a lady with long hair. She had no clothes on at all!
5
One day (and it was that day Stephen had decided to go to New York) he had come upon Stella and Alfred Munn in the corridor of the Milhampton City Club. They had been having lunch there in the ladles' dining-room.
The City Club was strictly a man's club. There was a ladles' dining-room, to be sure, but women did not make a practice of lunching there without an escort who was a member. This club had been the one place outside his office where Stephen had felt safe from Stella in Milhampton.
Stephen wasn't alone when he met Stella and Alfred Munn. There was a lawyer from Boston with him, an older man with whom he had been conferring all the morning; and upon whom he was anxious to make just the right impression. Stella had greeted Stephen with enthusiasm when she met him, and he had had to introduce the Boston lawyer to her, to present her impossible escort to him as well.
It was with a sinking heart that Stephen noticed that Stella had probably ordered something in the way of liquor to go with the luncheon she had just been enjoying with Munn. She was particularly vivacious. Stella never drank enough of anything to lose her self-control, but she did like getting her tongue unloosened, once in a while, she said, and her "flirting spirit up." Her "flirting spirit was up" now, Stephen observed. She made an arch attempt to flirt with the Boston lawyer, as she gave him her hand!
Stephen could feel himself grow red with mortification. He hastened the meeting to as speedy an end as possible, but brief as it was, it unpoised him, sapped him of all assurance and self-confidence.
He didn't want to look the Boston lawyer in the eyes after the meeting with Stella and Munn.
That night he wrote to the New York law firm and definitely accepted their proposition. Stephen was in a mood to accept any proposition which offered him relief from Stella.