The Fourth Side of the Triangle

Secretly, she still considered it “wrong” for young people of opposite sexes to be left alone together under any circumstances; the social freedom of the twentieth century bewildered and offended her. The very word “sex” was not used in “mixed” conversation by “ladies”; it had taken all her strength to utter the phrase “another woman” in the conversation with her son. There were other social distinctions as well in Lutetia’s lexicon. Judith Walsh, for example, was “a business associate” of her husband’s (and what a wrench it was for her to acknowledge that “a nice young woman” could be engaged in “business”!); had she had to think of Judy as an employee, Lutetia would inescapably have lumped her with the “servant class.” One always spoke politely, even kindly, to servants; but one did not, after all, dine with them.

Lutetia DeWitt had led the proper sheltered life; she had attended the proper young ladies’ schools; she had made the grand tour properly chaperoned; she had never been inside a night club (Lutetia called it a “cabaret”) in her life (a night club, after all, was a sort of saloon). She sipped a glass of sherry on occasion; beer she regarded as a food, which might be drunk for the purpose of gaining weight; whiskey was exclusively for men. She liked to devote at least one hour a day to her “needlework,” but this was never worked on in the presence of callers because it consisted of “tiny garments,” prepared for a lay sisterhood of her church which aided “unfortunate” young women.

She was, as Dane remarked to Judy, beyond belief. “I love Mother,” he said, “but to be in her company for any length of time is like living onstage during a performance of Berkeley Square.”

“Dane! What a thing to say.”

“I’ve had to live with her, Judykins.”

Divorced women who remarried were living in adultery; there was no more to be said on the subject, except of course that one was sorry for their unhappy children.

It was in the area of sex and marriage that Lutetia McKell’s upbringing expressed itself most strongly. A woman came to her marriage bed a virgin; the mere contrary thought was unspeakable. She would no more have thought of taking a lover than of allowing herself to be eaten by bears. Twin beds were as alien to her as prayer rugs or cuspidors, although separate bedrooms served certain marital situations. She knew dimly that in the unmapped seas in which husbands moved, there were such monsters as “loose women,” for each of whom there had to be a philandering man; in a vague way, while she disapproved, she also accepted. In this sense Lutetia McKell was far more middle-class French than upper-class English or American.

That she possessed an independent fortune was a felicity, a convenience that meant she had the means to indulge in private charities and bestow personal gifts. For family and domestic expenses she did not handle a penny or sign a check, and it had never occurred to her to demand the right as a matter of wifehood.

Lutetia McKell lived where her husband decreed, traveled when, as, and where he stipulated, bought what he told her to buy, ran her home as he wanted it run. She was happy when her husband seemed content; she grieved when he was out of sorts. She had no significant hopes or desires that were not Ashton McKell’s, and she felt no lack of any.

Still... “another woman”...

Why, the old goat, Dane thought.

Most deeply, he felt sorry for his mother; on another level, not so deep, he felt rather sorry for his father. But it was his mother who preoccupied him. How could she cope with a situation for which she had no background or resources? She was not like other women.

“It’s never happened before,” she said, and her lips compressed ever so slightly, as if to say, And it should not have happened now; but the lip compression was as far as the criticism would ever get. “I know that men have, well, certain feelings that women may not have, and there are undoubtedly situations in which they — you — cannot control yourselves absolutely. But with your father it’s never happened before, Dane, I’m quite certain of that.” It was as if she were pleading her husband’s case before some attentive court. She sat in her chair with hands lapped over, no hint of tears in her childlike blue eyes — a fragile figure of middle-aged porcelain.

He shouldn’t have done it to her, Dane ruminated. Not to Mother. She’s not equipped. Regardless of the deficiencies of their intimate life together, he shouldn’t have made her a victim of this commonest of marital tragedies. Not after living with her all these years. Not after taking her little Victorian self as it was and molding it to his accommodation. What did she have without her husband? Ashton McKell was her reason for being. It left her like a planet torn loose from its sun. Dane began to feel angry.