I always liked Helen. She's not spectacular, but steady and dependable.
Will you ever forget the way she took hold of that senior pageant
committee and whipped it into shape after Mildred had made such a mess
of it? How would she do here as a successor to me? I am filled with
jealousy at the thought of a successor, but I suppose I must face it.
"When did you last see Judy Abbott?" was Helen's first question.
"Fifteen minutes ago," said I. "She has just set sail for the Spanish
main with a husband and daughter and nurse and maid and valet and dog."
"Has she a nice husband?"
"None better."
"And does she still like him?"
"Never saw a happier marriage."
It struck me that Helen looked a trifle bleak, and I suddenly remembered
all that gossip that Marty Keene told us last summer; so I hastily
changed the conversation to a perfectly safe subject like orphans.
But later she told me the whole story herself in as detached and
impersonal a way as though she were discussing the characters in a book.
She has been living alone in the city, hardly seeing any one, and she
seemed low in spirits and glad to talk. Poor Helen appears to have made
an awful mess of her life. I don't know any one who has covered so much
ground in such a short space of time. Since her graduation she has been
married, has had a baby and lost him, divorced her husband, quarreled
with her family, and come to the city to earn her own living. She is
reading manuscript for a publishing house.
There seems to have been no reason for her divorce from the ordinary
point of view; the marriage just simply didn't work. They weren't
friends. If he had been a woman, she wouldn't have wasted half an hour
talking with him. If she had been a man, he would have said: "Glad
to see you. How are you?" and gone on. And yet they MARRIED. Isn't it
dreadful how blind this sex business can make people?
She was brought up on the theory that a woman's only legitimate
profession is homemaking. When she finished college, she was naturally
eager to start on her career, and Henry presented himself. Her family
scanned him closely, and found him perfect in every respect--good
family, good morals, good financial position, good looking. Helen was in
love with him. She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens
of embroidered towels. Everything looked propitious.
But as they began to get acquainted, they didn't like the same books
or jokes or people or amusements. He was expansive and social and
hilarious, and she wasn't. First they bored, and then they irritated,
each other. Her orderliness made him impatient, and his disorderliness
drove her wild. She would spend a day getting closets and bureau drawers
in order, and in five minutes he would stir them into chaos. He would
leave his clothes about for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy
heap on the bathroom floor, and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she,
on her side, was awfully unresponsive and irritating,--she realized it
fully,--she got to the point where she wouldn't laugh at his jokes.