The Business of Life

"Jim! I love my business. It was father's business; it represents my childhood, my girlhood, my maturity. Every detail of it is inextricably linked with memories of him – the dearest memories, the tenderest associations of my life! Do you wish me to give them up?"

"How can you be my wife, Jacqueline, and still remain a business woman?"

"Dear, I am certainly going to marry you. Permit me to arrange the rest. It will not interfere with my being your devoted and happy wife. It wouldn't ever interfere with – with my being a – a perfectly good mother – if that's what you fear. If it did, do you suppose I'd hesitate to choose?"

"No," he said, adoring her.

"Indeed, I wouldn't! But remaining in business will give me what every girl should have as a right – an object in life apart from her love for her husband – and children – apart from her proper domestic duties. It is her right to engage in the business of life; it makes the contract between you and me fairer. I love you more than anything in the world, but I simply couldn't keep my self-respect and depend on you for everything I have."

"But, my darling, everything I have is already yours."

"Yes, I know. We can pretend it is. I know I could have it – just as you could have this rather complicated business of mine – if you want it."

"Oh, Lord!" he exclaimed. "Imagine the fury of a connoisseur who engaged me to identify his priceless penates!"

He was laughing, too, now. They had finished their fruit salad and sherbet; she lighted a cigarette for him, taking a dainty puff and handing it to him with an adorable shudder.

"I don't like it! I don't like any vices! How women can enjoy what men enjoy is a mystery to me. Smoke slowly, darling, because when that cigarette is finished you must make a very graceful bow and say good-bye to me until to-morrow."

"This is simply devilish, Jacqueline! I never see you any more."

"Nonsense! You have plenty to do to amuse you – haven't you, dear?"

But the things that once occupied his leisure so casually and so agreeably no longer attracted him.

"I don't want to read seed catalogues," he protested. "Couldn't I be of use to you, Jacqueline? I'll do anything you say – take off my coat and sweep out your office, or go behind the counter in the shop and sell gilded gods – "

"Imagine the elegant Mr. Desboro selling antiquities to the dangerous monomaniacs who haunt such shops as mine! Dear, they'd either drive you crazy or have you arrested for fraud inside of ten minutes. No; you will make a perfectly good husband, Jim, but you were never created to decorate an antique shop."

He tried to smile, but only flushed rather painfully. A sudden and wholly inexplicable sense of inferiority possessed him.

"You know," he said, "I'm not going to stand around idle while you run a prosperous business concern. And anyway, I can't see it, Jacqueline. You and I are going to have a lot of social obligations to – "

"We are likely to have all kinds of obligations," she interrupted serenely, "and our lives are certain to be very full, and you and I are going to be equal to every opportunity, every demand, every responsibility – and still have leisure to love each other, and to be to each other everything that either could desire."

"After all," he said, serious and unconvinced, "there are only twenty-four hours in a day for us to be together."

"Yes, darling, but there will be no wasted time in those twenty-four hours. That is where we save a sufficient number of minutes to attend to the business of life."

"Do you mean that you intend to come into this office every day?"

"For a while, yes. Less frequently when I have trained my people a little longer. What do you suppose my father was doing all his life? What do you suppose I have been doing these last three years? Why, Jim, except that hitherto I have loved to fuss over details, this office and this business could almost run itself for six months at a time. Some day, except for special clients here and there, Lionel Sissly will do what expert work I now am doing; and this desk will be his; and his present position will be filled by Mr. Mirk. That is how it is planned. And if you had given me two or three months, I might have been able to go on a bridal trip with you!"

"We are going, aren't we?" he asked, appalled.

"If I've got to marry you offhand," she said seriously, "our wedding trip will have to wait. Don't you know, dear, that it always costs heavily to do anything in a hurry? At this time of year, and under the present conditions of business, and considering my contracts and obligations, it would be utterly impossible for me to go away again until summer."

He sprang up irritated, yet feeling utterly helpless under her friendly but level gaze. Already he began to realise the true significance of her position and his own in the world; how utterly at a moral disadvantage he stood before this young girl – moral, intellectual, spiritual – he was beginning to comprehend it all now.

A dull flush of anger made his face hot and altered his expression to sullenness. Where was all this leading them, anyway – this reversal of rôles, this self-dependent attitude of hers – this calm self-reliance – this freedom of decision?

Once he had supposed there was something in her to protect, to guide, advise, make allowance for – perhaps to persuade, possibly, even, to instruct. Such has been the immemorial attitude of man; it had been instinctively, and more or less unconsciously, his.

And now, in spite of her youth, her soft pliability, her almost childish grace and beauty, he was experiencing a half-dazed sensation as though, in full and confident career, he had come, slap! into collision with an occult barrier. And the impact was confusing him and even beginning to hurt him.

He looked around him uneasily. Everything in the office, somehow, seemed to be in subtle league with her to irritate him – her desk, her loaded letter-files, her stacks of ledgers – all these accused and offended him. But most of all his own helpless inferiority made him angry and ashamed – the inferiority of idleness confronted by industry; of aimlessness face to face with purpose; of irresolution and degeneracy scrutinised by fearlessness, confidence, and happy and innocent aspiration. And the combination silenced him.

And every mute second that he stood there, he felt as though something imperceptible, intangible, was slipping away from him – perhaps his man's immemorial right to lead, to decide, to direct the common destiny of this slim, sweet-lipped young girl and himself.

For it was she who was serenely deciding – who had already laid out the business of life for herself without hesitation, without resort to him, to his man's wisdom, experience, prejudices, wishes, desires. Moreover, she was leaving him absolutely free to decide his own business in life for himself; and that made her position unassailable. For if she had presumed to advise him, to suggest, even hint at anything interfering with his own personal liberty to decide for himself, he might have found some foothold, some niche, something to sustain him, to justify him, in assuming man's immemorial right to leadership.

"Dear," she said wistfully, "you look at me with such very troubled eyes. Is there anything I have said that you disapprove?"

"I had not expected you to remain in business," was all he found to say.

"If my remaining in business ever interferes with your happiness or with my duty to you, I will give it up. You know that, don't you?"

He reddened again.

"It looks queer," he muttered, " – your being in business and I – playing farmer – like one of those loafing husbands of celebrated actresses."

"Jim!" she exclaimed, scarlet to the ears. "What a horrid simile!"

"It's myself I'm cursing out," he said, almost angrily. "I can't cut such a figure. Don't you understand, Jacqueline? I haven't anything to occupy me! Do you expect me to hang around somewhere while you work? I tell you, I've got to find something to do as soon as we're married – or I couldn't look you in the face."

"That is for you to decide. Isn't it?" she asked sweetly.

"Yes, but on what am I to decide?"

"Whatever you decide, don't do it in a hurry, dear," she said, smiling.

The sullen sense of resentment returned, reddening his face again:

"I wouldn't have to hurry if you'd give up this business and live on our income and be free to travel and knock about with me – "

"Can't you understand that I will be free to be with you – free in mind, in conscience, in body, to travel with you, be with you, be to you whatever you desire – but only if I keep my self-respect! And I can't keep that if I neglect the business of life, which, in my case, lies partly here in this office."

She rose and laid one slim, pretty hand on his shoulder. She rarely permitted herself to touch him voluntarily.

"Don't you wish me to be happy?" she asked gently.

"It's all I wish in the world, Jacqueline."

"But I couldn't be happy and remain idle; remain dependent on you for anything – except love. Life to the full – every moment filled – that is what living means to me. And only one single thing never can fill one's life – not intellectual research alone; not spiritual remoteness; nor yet the pursuit of pleasure; nor the swift and endless hunt for happiness; nor even love, dearest among men! Only the business of life can quite fill life to the brimming for me; and that business is made up of everything worthy – of the pleasures of effort, duty, aspiration, and noble repose, but never of the pleasures of idleness. Jim, have I bored you with a sermon? Forgive me; I am preaching only to instruct myself."

He took her hand from his shoulder and stood holding it and looking at her with a strange expression. So dazed, yet so terribly intent he seemed at moments that she laid her other hand over his, pressing it in smiling anxiety.

"What is it, dearest?" she murmured. "Don't you approve of me as much as you thought you did? Am I disappointing you already?"