Frederic Kummer - The Brute

Every evening, almost, Donald Rogers and his wife Edith sat in a plain little living-room in their apartment in Harlem, and worked until ten or eleven o’clock. By that time they were both ready to go to bed. It was not very exciting. Edith darned stockings or sewed; Donald toiled at his desk, writing letters – going over reports. Sometimes, very rarely, they went to the theater. They had done the same thing for nearly eight years, and to Edith, at least, it seemed a very long time.

The room in which they sat reflected in its furnishings much of the life these two led. It seemed to suggest, in every line, an unceasing conflict between poverty and ambition – not, indeed, the poverty of the really poor, of those in actual want, but the poverty of the well born, of those whose desires are forever infinitely beyond their means.

This was evidenced by many curious contrasts. The furniture, for instance, was for the most part of that cheap and gloomy variety known as mission oak, yet the designs were good, as though its purchasers had striven toward some ideal which they had not the means to realize. The rug on the floor, an imitation oriental, was still of excellent coloring; the pictures showed taste in their selection – such taste, indeed, as is possible under the limitations imposed by a slender purse – among them might have been discovered a charming little water-color and some reproductions of etchings by Whistler.

The curtains were imitation lace, the ornaments on the mantel imitation bronze, the cushions in the Morris chair imitation Spanish leather. The keynote of the whole room was imitation – everything in it, almost, was the result of refinement and excellent taste on the one hand, hampered by lack of money on the other. The effect was somewhat that given by twenty dollar sets of ermine furs, or ropes of pearls at bargain-counter prices. Edith, caring more about such matters than her husband, realized this note of imitation keenly, but found it more satisfactory to have even the shadow of what she really desired than to drop back to another level of existence, and content herself with ingrain carpets, shiny yellow furniture, and the sort of pictures made of mother of pearl, which are given away with tea-store coupons. In her present environment, she chafed – in the other, she would have been suffocated.

On this particular night in March, they were at home as usual. Donald had composed himself at his desk, hunched over, his head resting upon his left hand, staring at the papers before him. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the trading-stamp clock on the mantel, and the clanking of the steam pipes. For a long time Donald stared, and wrote nothing. Suddenly he turned to his wife.

“For Heaven’s sake, Edith,” he exclaimed impatiently, “what’s the matter with those pipes?”

Edith glanced at him, but did not move. She came back slowly from her land of dreams.

“The janitor has probably just turned on the steam. It’s been off for the past week on account of the warm weather.”

Donald rose, and went nervously over to the radiator under the window.

“I can’t write with this infernal noise going on,” he grumbled, as he turned to his desk. “Will it be too cold for you?”

“Oh, no. I’m used to it.” Mrs. Rogers’ tone was patient, resigned.

Donald resumed his writing, and sat for a few moments in silence, but the tone of his wife’s remark had not been lost upon him. He turned toward her presently, with an anxious look, searching her face keenly.

“What’s the matter, Edith?” he inquired kindly. “Don’t you feel well?”

“Not particularly.” Mrs. Rogers’ voice was discouraging.

“Anything wrong?”

“No.”

“You haven’t seemed yourself for the past week. You don’t seem to take any interest in things.”

“What things?” inquired Edith, with sudden asperity. She took a sufficient interest in the things that seemed worth while to her, she well enough knew, but they were not those which made up her present surroundings.

Donald seemed hurt at her tone. He regarded her with an injured expression.

“Why,” he ventured hesitatingly, “all the things that make up our life – our home.”

The suggestion was not happy. It was, indeed, those very things that Edith had been mentally reviewing in her inner consciousness throughout the evening, and her conclusions had not been in their favor.

“The steam pipes, I suppose,” she returned scornfully, “and the price of eggs, and whether we are going to be able to pay our bills next month or not.”

“Don’t be so unkind, Edith,” said her husband, with an expression of pain. Her remark had hurt him, and, although she realized it, she somehow refused to admit to herself that she regretted it.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Surely you realize that I am doing the best I can,” he replied slowly. “I can’t do any more.”

“Well, suppose I do. Does that make it any easier?”

She felt angry and annoyed, first with Donald because he seemed unable to realize how barren her life with him was, and then with herself because she had allowed herself to become involved in this useless discussion. Donald, she knew, would always be the same. It was hopeless to expect him to change, or to try, by argument, to make him do so.

“Are you angry because I couldn’t afford to get you that new hat for Easter?” he asked, as he began to refill his pipe.

This falling back upon man’s universal belief that a woman’s happiness or unhappiness depends solely upon her clothes annoyed her still further.

“Don’t talk like a fool, Donald,” she exclaimed, throwing down her sewing angrily. “I’m tired, that’s all. For eight years I’ve darned stockings, collected trading stamps, done my own housework, and tried to imagine that the hats I’ve trimmed myself looked as though they came straight from Paris. When a woman has done that for eight years, she has a right to be tired.”

“But, Edith, it will not always be that way. You know how I am working for the future.”

Mrs. Rogers picked up her sewing and resumed her air of patient resignation. “The future is a long way off. When it comes, if it ever does, I shall probably be so old that I won’t care what sort of hats I wear.”

“Haven’t I had to endure it all, as well as you? Don’t you suppose it hurts me not to be able to give you everything you wish?”

“It’s different with a man.” She smiled a trifle bitterly, as she spoke. “You have your business, your friends, your ambitions. In ten years I shall be an old woman; you will be just ready to enjoy yourself.”

Donald rose from the desk and began to walk about the room nervously. He was too sincerely fond of Edith to want to quarrel with her, and he knew, as well as she did, the truth of what she had just said. After all, he thought, perhaps the woman does have the worst of the matrimonial bargain, in circumstances, at least, such as those with which he and Edith were struggling.

“There’s nothing I would care about enjoying, Edith, without you. Surely you know that.”

“I know. It’s very good of you to feel that way. It’s lack of money, I suppose, after all, that makes everything so hard.”

“I can’t do the impossible, Edith. You know what my income is, and what I have been scraping and saving for all these years.”

“To put every cent you had in the world into that glass factory in West Virginia. I know – very well.” It was clear, from the tone of Mrs. Rogers’ voice, that she felt little sympathy for this part of her husband’s plans, at any rate.

“Yes, I have. I know you have opposed it, but I am convinced that it is a great proposition. In five years, or possibly less, I expect to get big profits from it. Isn’t it worth waiting and saving for?”