The Other Two

“When she had appeared in New York, nine or ten years earlier, as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus Varick had unearthed somewhere-was it in Pittsburgh or Utica?—society, while promptly accepting her, had reserved the right to cast a doubt on his own discrimination. Inquiry, however, established her undoubted connection with a socially reigning family, and explained her recent divorce as the natural result of a runaway match at seventeen; and as nothing was known of Mr. Haskett it was easy to believe the worst of him.” 

Society has great power and resources to delve into a person’s background and discover if he or she can qualify to be part of the elite or not. Although society appears to accept Mrs. Haskett because of her relationship to Varick, it is clear that is not enough. Investigations are made to see if Mrs. Haskett will fit in with society or not. Because it is found that she has ties to social royalty, “a socially reigning family” (Part 1), she is approved despite her divorce. Everyone assumes the worst of Mr. Haskett since the normal inclination of society gossip is to assume the worst. Also, it is most likely the former Mrs. Haskett herself encouraged this interpretation to give herself a better reputation, in society’s narrow eyes.

“Waythorn had an amused confidence in his wife’s ability to justify herself. His expectations were fulfilled, and before the wedding took place Alice Varick’s group had rallied openly to her support. She took it all imperturbably: she had a way of surmounting obstacles without seeming to be aware of them, and Waythorn looked back with wonder at the trivialities over which he had worn his nerves thin.”

Despite flouting convention by marrying three times, Alice has been able to win over the support of society. Waythorn expresses confidence in his wife’s ability in “surmounting obstacles,” and yet this supposed confidence is undercut when he says that he “looked back with wonder at the trivialities over which he had worn his nerves thin.” There is an interesting contradiction in Waythorn’s thoughts. He wants to express ease and confidence in his manner, much as Varick seems to project such ease. But then when this mask is removed, the reader can see the strain that Waythorn is truly suffering from.

“As his door closed behind him he reflected that before he opened it again it would have admitted another man who had as much right to enter it himself, and the thought filled him with a physical repugnance.”

Waythorn’s home is his kingdom, and he guards this territory zealously. It is difficult for him to allow his wife’s ex-husband into his private home. But he agrees, mainly because he felt like a “brute” when arguing about the issue with his wife, whose “lip was beginning to tremble” (Part 1). (Interestingly, his wife has allowed Waythorn to consider Haskett a “brute,” which Waythorn believes until he meets Haskett and realizes he’s a mild-mannered, deferential man.) And yet this desire to escape confrontation ironically leads him straight into a direct confrontation with Varick, his wife’s other ex-husband. By the end of the story, Waythorn will allow both of her ex-husbands entrance to his home, where he will offer them cigars and Alice will offer them tea.

“Varick was said to be fond of good living, as Waythorn sat dispatching his hurried luncheon he looked across half enviously at the other’s leisurely degustation of his meal. When Waythorn first saw him he had been helping himself with critical deliberation to a bit of Camembert at the ideal point of liquefaction, and now, the cheese removed, he was just pouring his café double from its little two-storied earthen pot. He poured slowly, his ruddy profile bent above the task, and one beringed white hand steadying the lid of the coffee-pot; then he stretched his other hand to the decanter of cognac at his elbow, filled a liqueur-glass, took a tentative sip, and poured the brandy into his coffee-cup.

Waythorn watched him in a kind of fascination. What was the thinking of—only of the flavor of the coffee and the liqueur? Had the morning’s meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on his face? Had his wife so completely passed out of his life that even this odd encounter with her present husband, within a week after her remarriage, was no more than an incident in his day?”

Varick’s evident delight in the sensual experience of luxury dining is fascinating to Waythorn. But Waythorn is most struck by Varick’s seeming lack of self-consciousness. Varick seems to live entirely in the moment. He does not seem to care about anyone else’s opinions. He does not seem burdened with anxieties as Waythorn, who always worries about what others think. 

“He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the coffee-pot. The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all compact of harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship. They were his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light haze of her hair, the lips and eyes....

She set down the coffee-pot, and reaching for the decanter of cognac, measured off a liqueur-glass and poured it into his cup.

“Waythorn uttered a sudden exclamation.”

Ironically, Waythorn seems to be acting out the same scene he witnessed earlier that day when he saw Varick enjoying his after-meal coffee with brandy. Just as Varick did, he is delighting not only in the coffee ritual, but also in his wife’s beauty, which is described as lovingly as the Camembert cheese was described earlier. But unlike Varick, who is able to indulge in his ritual at ease, Waythorn is jolted out of his luxury when Alice mistakenly makes a coffee according to Varick’s taste (with brandy). Her habits are still attuned to her ex-husband’s needs, and Waythorn is startled by the sudden “presence” of Varick in the intimacy of their moment.

“That afternoon, apprised by telephone, Varick called at the office. Waythorn, waiting in his private room, wondered what the others thought of it. The newspapers, at the time of Mrs. Waythorn’s marriage, had acquainted their readers with every detail of her previous matrimonial ventures, and Waythorn could fancy the clerks smiling behind Varick’s back as she was ushered in.

“Varick bore himself admirably. He was easy without being undignified, and Waythorn was conscious of cutting a much less impressive figure. Varick had no head for business, and the talk prolonged itself for nearly an hour while Waythorn set forth with scrupulous precision the details of the proposed transaction.” 

Again, the reader is aware of how Waythorn constantly feels watched in public places. However, the detail about the newspapers, which had “acquainted their readers with every detail of her previous matrimonial ventures,” gives a hint of the source of Waythorn’s anxieties. While society seems very accommodating for the most part as it approves of Alice and all of her marriages despite the stigma often associated with divorce, this detail shows the reach of society as it is able to pry into the privates lives of Alice’s marriages and publicly broadcast such details to everyone.

Thus, Waythorn’s discomfort is understandable, yet he strives to attain a posture of comfort and ease. He envies Varick and Alice, who seem to project such ease. He is determined to create a comparable mask of calm despite the absurd circumstances he must face.

“In the library he found a small effaced-looking man with a thinnish gray beard sitting on the edge of a chair. The stranger might have been a piano-tuner, or one of those mysteriously efficient persons who are summoned in emergencies to adjust some detail of the domestic machinery. He blinked at Waythorn through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and said mildly: ‘Mr. Waythorn, I presume? I am Lily’s father.’

“Waythorn flushed. ‘Oh—’ he stammered uncomfortably. He broke off, disliking to appear rude. Inwardly he was trying to adjust the actual Haskett to the image of him projected by his wife’s reminiscences. Waythorn had been allowed to infer that Alice’s first husband was a brute.”

Haskett is nothing like what Waythorn expected. Waythorn expected a “brute,” assuming that Haskett’s brutish ways were the reason for the divorce. This is what Alice led him to believe. But Haskett’s mild nature suggests that there were other reasons for the divorce, perhaps implying that it was Alice’s own desire that ended the marriage, especially if she felt “that she belonged in a bigger place” (Part 3). 

“On his dressing-table stood a photograph of Alice, taken when he had first known her. She was Alice Varick then—how fine and exquisite he had thought her! Those were Varick’s pearls about her neck. At Waythorn’s insistence they had been returned before her marriage.” 

Waythorn has a very superficial knowledge of Alice. Ironically, the pearls around Alice’s neck symbolize her desire to have a well-to-do husband. They stand in clear contrast to the cheap tie that Haskett, her first husband, wears around his neck. Even though Waythorn insisted she return the pearls, in many ways she is still connected to her ex-husbands despite Waythorn’s attempt to deny it.  

“She had lied to him then, but she had respected his wishes since; and the incident cast a curious light on her character. He was sure she would not have seen Haskett that first day if she had divined that Waythorn would object, and the fact that she did not divine it was almost as disagreeable to the latter as the discovery that she had lied to him.”

Alice failed to tell Waythorn the truth because she wanted to keep him happy. Waythorn realizes this but he still finds fault with Alice for failing to understand his desire. He does not want to have to explain things to her, which he finds disagreeable. He is disappointed in her ability to fail to understand his feelings, which embarrasses him. He is also surprised in her failings since she is usually so accomplished in her abilities to anticipate his needs.

“The little man, in order to be near his daughter, had sold out his share in a profitable business in a Utica, and accepted a modest clerkship in a New York manufacturing house. He boarded in a shabby street and had few acquaintances. His passion for Lily filled his life.”

Unlike Varick and Waythorn, Haskett has little desire for materialistic needs. His emotional fulfillment comes from his relationship to his daughter Lily. He will sacrifice much for her wellbeing. Waythorn can find nothing objectionable about the man. Waythorn also realizes there is no way to stop this man, apparently so different from him, from entering the privacy and intimacy of his home. While Varick is portrayed as of a similar class as Waythorn, and Waythorn clearly seems to admire him, he recoils from Haskett’s lower class and deferential meek manner. And yet Haskett seems to be the only one capable of expressing his love and devotion to another person, his daughter.

“She paused a moment, ‘I’ll do just as you wish,’ she returned pliantly. ‘I thought it would be less awkward to speak to him when we meet.’

“Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had she really no will of her own—no theory about her relation to these men? She had accepted Haskett—did she mean to accept Varick? It was ‘less awkward,’ as she had said, and her instinct was to evade difficulties or to circumvent them. With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the instinct had developed. She was ‘as easy as an old shoe’—a shoe that too many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in too many different directions. Alice Haskett-Alice Varick-Alice Waythorn-she had been each in turn, and had left hanging to each name a little of her privacy, a little of her personality, a little of the inmost self where the unknown god abides.”

Waythorn’s growing suspicion that his wife may not be solely “possessed” by Waythorn but in fact may be “shared” with her ex-husbands leads him to reflect on just how well he knows his wife. Her “shared” existence has forced her to become “pliant” as a way to please all of her social arrangements. But Waythorn only likes when his wife is “pliant” toward him. When he realizes that her pliant nature also extends to her ex-husbands, he “sickened” that he is not the sole recipient.

“The winter wore on, and society took advantage of the Waythorns’ acceptance of Varick. Harassed hostesses were grateful to them for bridging over a social difficulty, and Mrs. Waythorn was held up as a miracle of good taste. Some experimental spirits could not resist the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together, and there were those who thought he found a zest in the propinquity. But Mrs. Waythorn’s conduct remained irreproachable. She neither avoided Varick nor sought him out. Even Waythorn could not but admit that she had discovered the solution of the newest social problem.” 

Mrs. Waythorn’s pliant nature finally wins out in the end. It solves the social awkwardness that the close-knit upper-class New York society creates, a society that ensures multiple meetings, whether in restaurants, trains, work places, or at the numerous parties that “harassed hostesses” must delicately arrange. 

“One afternoon, however, he learned on entering that Lily’s father was waiting to see him. In the library he found Haskett occupying a chair in his usual provisional way. Waythorn always felt grateful to him for not leaning back.” 

This small detail shows how closely Waythorn examines and feels everything. Haskett has been in his home often, and every time, Waythorn has examined his posture carefully. Haskett does not overstep boundaries by leaning back and becoming too comfortable in another man’s home and for this, Waythorn is “grateful.” He knows there is little he can do about stopping Haskett from entering his home. But he likes that there is still some boundary separating him from Haskett, some detail that still proves that he is master of his own house. Of course, such illusions are soon shattered when Varick enters the room.