CHAPTER XLIV
Tom Gaylor’s wife was almost—but not quite—as much sought after in London as Ivy Sên had been. An unmarried heiress presents innumerable possibilities—a fascinating theme. “Which of them will she marry?” Ivy’s peculiar appearance had made speculation delightedly piquant. Her marriage ended that. But the radiant young wife was even a more valuable social asset than Miss Sên had been. Mrs. Gaylor’s house was delightful in every way, her entertaining yielded pride of place to none.
Society set much store by Ivy Gaylor; she was so unusual, and at the same time so everything that was exactly right. The Gaylors had everything, did everything, and whatever Mrs. Tom Gaylor did, she did to perfection.
And Ivy Gaylor was moderately happy.
Tom was contented—in every way but one. He was a kind and constant comrade, if no longer, after two years of marriage, quite the pronounced lover that the wife, more ardent of nature than he, secretly craved.
The old weak-spot of marriage had found them out, as it usually does: “woman’s whole existence,” and man’s sagging into tranquil half-time good-fellowship, taking his wife and his home a little for granted if the marriage keeps rather more than the average of happiness.
But marriage had developed Ivy richly. She took what Tom gave, made the most of it, and was grateful. She knew that Tom loved her, that he never had dreamed of regretting their marriage. He spent very much more time with her than most husbands did, in their set. He had not tired of her, even if he had rather outgrown the ebullient endearments of betrothal and honeymoon days. Ivy Gaylor knew that she had a rich portion of what every woman (own it or deny it) longs for from girlhood to death intensely as no woman ever longs for anything else: the ardent devotion and longing of one man—and its constant expression. Few women can satisfy themselves with tranquil affection; foolish sex, no doubt, that claims to wear the flowers of Spring and feast on the fruits of frost-ripened Autumn at the same time! Is it perhaps because woman asks so much—over-asks and clamors—that she often receives so little, holds it so insecurely?
Ivy Gaylor knew that her man was not tired of her, but he no longer wooed her, and she was the type of woman that craves constant courtship—an enormously preponderant part of the sex, in the West. Society interested and pleased her, but it did not engross her at all, and amused more than it satisfied. She cared for but three things really intensely: the English countryside, men—greatly narrowed to one man—and little children. Ivy adored babies. She always had. In the most tempestuous days of her naughty childhood and discontented, rebellious girlhood, the companionship of tiny children or a baby to cuddle never had failed to gladden and soothe her, and to turn all her churning bitterness into sweetness.
It was her determination that hers should be a childless marriage. It hurt.
Tom Gaylor, staunch, easy-going, a trifle thick-skinned, always courteous, inclined to be casual, complacent, amiable, far more negative than positive, impressionable but not inflammable, had not fallen in love with even half the violence that Ivy had. She knew it—a girl always knows—and it had jarred her happiest hours. He took marriage, after its first stimulating novelty, at a comfortable jog-trot. It hurt; but she had the wit and the character not to show that it did; she had pride, that best and stoutest buckler of a disappointed woman; she had the sense to realize that her husband gave her all that he had to give; and she had the justice not to blame him for what was not his fault, for what he could not help. But Ivy Gaylor was no more thick-skinned or easily satisfied than Ivy Sên had been, and it rankled.
Still, after two years of marriage Ivy was moderately happy and in every way but one Gaylor was content. “Quite resigned to matrimony,” Lady Snow said of him impatiently once. Sir Charles had smiled and retorted, “Sensible fellow.”
But Gaylor wished for a son. He was every bit as fond of children as Ivy was, and the one passionate desire of his otherwise tranquil being was for a boy of his own, a girl or two, and another boy or two to follow—of course.
His wife knew, and it cankered.
It made her own not-to-be-satisfied longing a double cross, a longing that whipped her mercilessly.
But her grim determination only hardened as time went. Her English name was a great palliative to Ivy Gaylor. She knew that her own position in the England she so acutely loved was established and secure. But she still disliked to see her own face and the tint of her lovely hands, and she swore that no child should lie in her arms—to look up at her perhaps with her own Chinese eyes set in a baby Chinese face—a son to be branded as long as he lived with an un-English face, or a girl to suffer as she herself had done.
Love has to be paid for; disobedience has to be paid for—everything has. The heaviest price that any human debtor has to pay is the price of disobedient love.
For the love of Sên King-lo and Ivy Gilbert, beautiful, unselfish, enduring—always fine and pure in itself—had disobeyed a Law. Ivy their daughter had paid a terrible price and was paying it yet—one of the inexorable debts that time and Heaven may forgive, but that can never be paid, and that life never forgives nor forgets. Sên King-lo had drunk and drained his hyssop; Ruby Sên had tasted it; for Ivy their daughter it brimmed in a cup always at her lip.
It stung and was bitter, just a drop or two, on Tom Gaylor’s mouth now and then, though he never had suspected it, probably never would, and by no mental or spiritual effort could have understood, had you told him all about it, what in the world all the ridiculous pother was about.
Gaylor considered his wife the prettiest thing in London, a judgment in which he was far more acute than he often was.
Gaylor was proud of his “Chinese” wife. But he wanted children inordinately, if the most natural of all human wishes ever can be called “inordinate”—the desire and instinct that of all human desires is fullest or emptiest, best or worst, in fulfillment. The gamble of marriage is small, and its retributions are puny compared to the gamble and retributions of parenthood.