# The Propriety of Pauline

Extracted from the Metropolitan Magazine, vol. 24 1906; pp. 454-459. Accompanying illustrations by E. Fuhr omitted.
THE PROPRIETY OF PAULINE
BY LEONARD MERRICK
ILLUSTRATED BY E. FUHR
IN the day that Gardiner landed in New York he had been absent from his wife for six months. This was not Gardiner's fault; she had remained in Chicago by her own wish when business took him to London. For one thing, she had begun to lose her interest in his business—he wrote the "books" of musical comedies—and for another, she had begun to pronounce Europe "decadent" and "effete."
He had not seen her for six months, and he boarded the train with impatience. He was very fond of Pauline, though during the last year or so he had observed the increasing seriousness of her outlook with dismay; she was not—and he could not persuade himself that she was—quite so amusing as she used to be, quite so companionable. She remained, however, quite as enchantingly pretty, and the fancy of her svelte figure in his arms, of the welcome of her beautiful eyes and lips, was so imperative that Gardiner could hardly interest himself in the bundle of newspapers that he had bought.
As he turned them over, he thought again of her recent letters; they had been disturbing, there was a new note in them—or, more precisely, a crescendo of the note that she had sounded some time ago. She appeared to be—he could not disguise the fact from himself—in danger of developing into the sort of woman that he especially detested—the prude.
He decided to plead to her more earnestly than he had done hitherto, to entreat her to be always the piquante, captivating little chum that he had married; and just as he was playing mentally a delicious scene in which she surrendered to his appeal with kisses, her name leapt to him out of the Herald.
"Mrs. Barry Gardiner of Chicago, wife of the well-known dramatist, and the president of the newly formed League for the Suppression of Impropriety, has opened a campaign against ladies' 'elbow sleeves,' which she declares are full of danger to the purity of the young men of the land."
"Great Scott!" gasped Gardiner. The blood left his cheeks. He sat staring at the paragraph, paralyzed.
Pauline, the woman he loved, the woman who had been such a delightful girl, was notorious—had become the most obnoxious kind of crank! His color returned with a rush—he turned red, red with shame, at his wife's prurience.
He ate my little on the journey, and slept not a wink. He could not shrug his shoulders at her with a laugh, ludicrous as she was; it was for others to laugh—to him, her husband, the situation was simply painful. All at once Gardiner felt as if he were married to a stranger, felt that he was bound to a wife whom he did not know, and whom he shrank from knowing. What could their life together be now? A continuous conflict and humiliation!
Oh, but she should be brought to her senses! He would not permit herself to make herself and him ridiculous in this fashion. The anomaly was too conspicuous—the husband who wrote "leg pieces," and the wife who indicted the wearers of elbow sleeves. How everyone must be guffawing—he thanked his luck that he hadn't dropped in to the "Lambs" before driving to the depot. Why, the division in the house of Gardiner must be the star joke of America!
Chicago was reached in the morning. He had a very charming little villa on the North Side—where it is nearly Germany, but not quite—and as a surface car rushed him home, the population were streaming down town to their offices, and giving one another the German for "Good-day."
Pauline was writing letters when he opened the parlor door. "Barry—darling!" she cried, dropping her pen; and for a moment he was holding the Pauline of their honeymoon. "Why didn't you cable?" she said breathlessly. "What boat did you come by?"
"I got through sooner than I expected; I thought I'd surprise you."
"Dear old boy! Well!"
"Well?" He noted that she had adopted a Quakerish costume that made her as unlovely as nature allowed. "What have you got on?" he asked. "Is that le dernier cri?"
She looked a trifle embarrassed.
"I dress like this now," she said; "all the women of the League do."
"I saw something about your League in the paper on board the train," answered Gardiner. "You know, Pauline—but we'll talk about that by and by! Well, dearest, the show went fairly well in London, and I've a commission that's going to mean money. You received the press notices I sent?"
"I received them, y-e-s," she murmured.
"What's wrong? They were pretty complimentary, weren't they?"
"I—well, as you say, we can talk about that by and by."
"I guess," said Gardiner, "that we may as well talk about it right away. Those notices are going to lead to dollars, and dollars are what I'm in the business for, so it's not an uncongenial topic. I thought you'd be mighty pleased."
"My—my views have changed," she stammered. "To speak frankly, I can't approve your business."
"Oh, how's that?" He was smiling, but he wasn't entertained.
"I disapprove very strongly," she went on with more firmness; "it is in direct opposition to the League. We are working to remove temptation from the path of young men; I am lecturing on the evil influence of women's dress—the ordinary costumes that one sees in any drawing-room. You can understand that it would be grossly inconsistent of me to protest against elbow sleeves if my husband continued to bring out plays in which girls expose their limbs in short skirts?"
"Perfectly," he agreed.
"That's all right, then!" she said cheerfully; "I was afraid you'd want to argue about it."
"So, my darling," added Gardiner, "you had better not protest any more."
"What?" she faltered.
"I say that you had better not protest any more, for, as you see, you are placing yourself in a very false position."
"My dear Harry! I don't think you have grasped the sense of what I say."
"I think I have," said Gardiner. "You point out, with undeniable truth, the incongruity between your own campaign and my plays. Well, obviously, since we can't have both, you must stop your campaign."
"Oh, no, indeed," she exclaimed; "you must stop the plays."
"Are you serious?" inquired her husband after a slight pause.
"It is far too grave a subject for me to jest upon it," said Pauline with cold dignity.
"You propose that I should renounce my means of livelihood in order that you may have a free hand to make yourself a laughing-stock?"
"You arc scarcely polite," she flamed.
"Your subject itself is not polite," returned Gardiner; "it is, as a matter of fact, highly indelicate. I should object to my wife defiling herself with it even if I didn't work for the theater at all. Good heavens, Pauline, can't you realize what people must be saying about you?"
"All reformers must be prepared for stones. There are many people, in Chicago alone, who are with me heart and soul."
"What people? Not your parents, I'll bet! Women who thirst for publicity, and haven't the brains to acquire it by any reputable means! Those are the large majority of the people who are 'with you heart and soul'—they can't 'carve their names in bronze,' and so they will write them in mud. The rest are either women who have gone cranky through idleness or born meddlers of a nasty turn of mind."
"May I ask in which category you include me?"
"I include you among the second—you have become eccentric for lack of occupation."
"‘Eccentric'?"
"Well, you'll admit that the normal woman has no devouring aim to lengthen her neighbor's sleeves? You have never had anything to do worth doing, that's your trouble—your father is a successful business man, and he brought you up to a life of leisure. Then you married—and we have no family. It is an implanted instinct in your sex to dress something or somebody; in the nursery you dressed dolls; in different circumstances, you would now dress children; as it is, you want to dress other women. Indulge the natural inclination with artistry—design models!"
"Oh, this is preposterous!" she cried; "you are talking to me as if I were an idiot! I am engaged in very necessary and very noble work—and work, moreover, that is essentially woman's province; if the way our sisters dress provokes impure thoughts, it is for us to tell them so, and insist on a reform. Do you suggest that the movement should be headed by men?"
"I suggest that there should be no movement at all."
"You would allow the evil to flourish unchecked?"
"The only evil exists in the minds of the meddlers."
"That is the merest fudge. As a man of the world you know very well that it is."
"As a man of the world I know very well that the 'movement,' as you call it, provokes precisely the kind of thoughts that you are eager to suppress. And, anyhow, I resent my wife's getting up in public and talking about these things. It makes me ashamed."
"It would make me ashamed," she retorted, "to know that I neglected vital work because I feared the sneers of the worldly!"
"Vital? Ye gods!"
"If I save one soul—"
"By lengthening a pair of sleeves? Do you tolerate bare hands, or is woman always to be gloved?"
"The effect produced on the masculine imagination by the sight of the female arm——"
"My dear Pauline, save it for the League of the ladies! As an average man, I draw the line."
"In other words, you'd like to shirk my facts?"
"In other words," cried Gardiner, exasperated, "I'd like to box your ears!"
After that the president did not speak to him for the rest of the day, of course; and it was in these circumstances that he returned to Chicago.
It was a wofully different return from the one he had pictured, and since he was too loyal to make his moan to friends, the only condolence that he received was her parents'. Her parents were hardly less dismayed than Gardiner himself; but even they were unsatisfactory, for they had counted on his homecoming to put a stop to her folly, and were inclined to reproach him for weakness.
"You should exert your authority, my boy," urged Mr. Hummel; "if argument is no good, you should exert your authority! I'm astonished that you don't forbid such blithers—you're her husband!"
"She got the bit between her teeth and bolted while I was away," returned the harassed young man. "What's gained by my 'forbidding'?—I can't lock her up! It puzzles me that you couldn't restrain her at the start—you're her father!"
"Well, well, it's no use our reproaching each other," said Mr. Hummel testily. "The question is, what's to be done? She's making America mighty unpleasant for us; I'm afraid to pick up a comic paper nowadays—and her mother proposes to reside permanently in Paris. I cannot quit Chicago myself—it is considerably rough on a man to be left a grass widower because his daughter's husband is unable to control her."
"You have my earnest sympathy," declared his son-in-law. "I am sure you realize also that the situation is not all clams and candy for me—I have to live with her! Apart from my natural aversion to my wife serving as material for the comic papers, it is discomfiting to know that she regards me as one of the most satanic of her opponents."
"What?"
"I have been home for three weeks now, and she has never failed to sigh ponderously as she passed my work-table."
"Pauline wishes you to give up your work?"
"She originally demanded that I should do so. However, that point has now been waived; she resigns herself to my continuing my occupation on the understanding that I make no attempt to interfere with hers. Some people might consider that satisfactory I am not among those optimists; I married your daughter with the notion of our traveling through life side by side, not of our tugging silently in opposite directions."
"Talk to her, Barry," exclaimed Mr. Hummel; "talk to her, my boy! Give her a kiss, and take her to dinner at a restaurant—come to a tender understanding; she has a good heart, although she is out of her head. A few affectionate words may accomplish wonders."
"Well," assented Gardiner heavily, "I will have a final shot at it. But I am not sanguine; and as to kisses and restaurants, she has no leisure for such frivolities—she is too busy writing pamphlets and addressing the League.
Now if Gardiner had not loved his foolish wife sincerely—if she had not been, in spite of her new phase, the only woman on this planet for him—the story could have had but one conclusion: he would have found outside the house the companionship that was denied to him within, and "The End" would have been written "Gardiner v. Gardiner and somebody else." But he did love her sincerely—so sincerely that the ridicule with which she covered him was insignificant to his mind beside the fact of their estrangement—and after many sleepless nights, during which he questioned how he could win her back, he devised an experiment.
One morning he had another chat with Mr. Hummel, who was in the real estate business, and in the afternoon, when Pauline returned from a meeting, he said to her, "Pauline, my dear, can you spare me ten minutes?"
"Is it important?" she inquired with surprise; "I have a good deal of work to do to-night."
"It is important," admitted Gardiner; "besides, I think it will please you. You mast see, Pauline—in fact, you pointed it out to me when I came back from Europe—that your work and mine clash—and the discord has separated us. Well, I'm not going to be a humbug and pretend that I've come to like your work, but I'm immensely fond of you, and I can't bear to lose you. So I've concluded to get out of the theater, darling! I don't expect you to throw your arms round me instanter, of course—I know I must prove myself in earnest first; but when a few months have passed and you see that I mean it, I hope things will lie as they were between us, eh?"
"Oh, Barry," she murmured, "I—you know I shall always love you, don't you, dear? It isn't that I love you any less, but my conscience——"
"Quite so," said Gardiner. "I fully understand. Circumstances compel one or the other of us to make a sacrifice, and I've cast myself for the part! I'll cancel my contract to supply a play next fall, and I'll never write another line for the stage unless you want me to."
"But—but how are we to live?" she faltered.
"Well, that's the drawback—I ought to have said that we must collaborate in the sacrifice! Your father has promised me a berth in his office; he has been very liberal, considering that I haven't an atom of business training—he's going to start me at twenty dollars a week. In a boarding-house we can manage comfortably on twenty dollars a week; and he has offered to raise me to thirty at the end of a year if I get the hang of things."
"A boarding-house?" Her voice was faint.
"It's a bit rough on you, I know, but it seems the only way out. We can't go on like this—and naturally we can't run our own house on the salary. Anyhow, you'll be free to continue your mission, and my trade won't be jarring your sensibilities."
"It is most generous of you," stammered Pauline; "I appreciate your concession very much."
"Dearest, I am doing it as much for my own sake as yours—I'd rather lose twenty trades than my wife! We'll get out of this place at once—try to let it as it stands—and, if you have time, you might look around for as decent a pension as you can strike. I think we could afford fifteen dollars a week, eh? That will leave us five for dress and sundries; we mustn't reckon on the rent from the house right away—I guess it'll be quite a while before we find a tenant."
That night it was Pauline who was sleepless; and when she went down to breakfast, a person on the sidewalk was fixing a notice board which announced that the villa was to be let furnished.
The average boarding-house of America is less suicidally depressing than that of England; not only are the food and the cooking far better—human people stay in American boarding-houses, whereas in England boarding-houses are supported by a class apart, a class that one never sees anywhere else. Gardiner's discovery, however, was distinctly below the average. In this establishment one could board—that is to say, one could occupy a "hall room" and partake of two meals daily—for five dollars a week, and some of its patrons were as low as the terms they paid. The president's conscience gave her scant encouragement as she descended to the basement at the clashing of the supper bell, and glanced at the slop-made faces of the company. The young men's voices sawed her nerves, and the apparel of the young women set her teeth on edge. Almost she would have preferred elbow sleeves to virtuous garments that were so hideous. The negro waiters—ungloved in Illinois Street—clattered the crockery as freely as if the supper-table had been a sink; and when she sent away her plate, a black hand tossed her knife and fork back to her, to be retained for the next course.
"We shall get hardened in time," whispered Gardiner cheerfully, observing her despondence; "buck up!"
After supper some the company adjourned to the parlor, where one of the young women strummed a selection from "The Belle of New York"—and Pauline spent the evening weeping in her bedroom.
She went to see her parents on the morrow, and proposed that her father should take Barry into partnership.
"The place is impossible," she explained; "we cannot hope to exist on twenty dollars a week! I think the least you might do, papa, is to pay Barry five thousand a year."
"How's that?" said Hummel, highly gratified to perceive that the experiment was working so well.
"Then we could have our own home again. Our privations are frightful—the negroes do not even wear gloves!"
"Does Barry make this proposition himself?"
"No," she said; "Barry does not know that I have come to you."
"I am relieved to hear you say so. See here, rosebud! If your husband had taken any stock in my advice, he would have hustled along in his own trade whether you were sane or not. He concluded to quit, and I could not permit you both to starve. But I am already paying Barry eighteen dollars a week more than his services are worth to me, and my affection has reached the limit. It has to be definitely understood that I do not contemplate carpeting the path of madness with greenbacks."
"I would not have believed that you could be so cold and cruel," said Pauline. "Where is your father's heart? And what's the trouble with mama's?"
"You would be discreet not to refer to our hearts," quavered her mother; "remember that your wilfulness has broken them! I never guessed I should live to claim that my son-in-law was too indulgent to my daughter; but I have arrived at that opinion!"
Pauline returned to the bedroom.
She wrote her speeches now at a toilet table, and they were less eloquent than when she had drafted them at a Chippendale escritoire. The weeks lagged heavily. Somehow her interest in the League was not so absorbing as it had been' her own hardships occupied her mind more insistently than the salvation of young men. Indeed, when she regarded the specimens in the boarding-house, she was, in moments of exasperation, inclined to hold it of no importance if young men were saved or not.
And while she sat alone in this glum apartment of an Illinois Street boarding-house, a wonderful thing happened. The President of the League for the Suppression of Impropriety vanished! Nobody saw her go, nobody knew where she went, nobody ever found her again; the President of the League, with all her fads and tantrums, popped into space—and Pauline the perfect wife, Pauline the lovable, came back!
It was six o'clock—her husband would soon be in. She darted to their portmanteaus; and in the enchanted spot everything went pell-mell and helter-skelter until she unpacked what she had sought—her most elaborate evening frock and his dress clothes. Never had she done her hair so swiftly, never had she looked so entrancing as when her toilette was complete.
She heard him on the stairs, and rose to greet him, suppliant, coquettish, triumphant all at once.
"Great Scott, I've struck the wrong room!" gasped the young man; "excuse me, madam!"
"Barry," she said, laughing and crying, "will you write some more plays, please, and take me to a theater to-night? And, Barry"—the fashionable figure crept closer and wound her bare arms about his neck—"will you kiss a fool?"
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1939, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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