V
Inrefusing Edna her heart’s desire thus promptly and tersely I had an object. I assumed she would protest and argue; in the discussion that would follow some light might come to me, utterly befogged as to what course to take about my family affairs. I knew something should be done—something quick and drastic. But what? It was no new experience to me to be faced with complex and well-nigh impossible situations. My business life had been a succession of such experiences. And while I had learned much as to handling them, I had also learned how dangerous it is to rush in recklessly and to begin action before one has discovered what to do—and whatnotto do. The world is full of Hasty Hals and Hatties who pride themselves on their emergency minds, on knowing just what to do in any situation the instant it arises; and fine spectacles they are, lying buried and broken amid the ruins they have aggravated if not created.
How recover my wife? How rescue my daughter? I could think of no plan—of no beginning toward a plan. And when Edna, by receiving my refusal in cold silence, defeated my hope of a possibly illuminating discussion, I did not know which way to turn.
Why had I refused to help her in the way she suggested?Not on moral grounds, gentle reader. There I should have been as free from scruple as you yourself would have been, as you perhaps have been in your social climbing or maneuvering in your native town, wherever it is. Nor yet through fear of failure. I did not know the social game, but I did know something of human nature. And I had found out that the triumphant class, far from being the gentlest and most civilized, as its dominant position in civilization would indicate, was in fact the most barbarous, was saturated with the raw savage spirit of the right of might. I am speaking of actualities, not of pretenses—of deeds, not of words. To find a class approaching it in frank savagery of will and action you would have to descend through the social strata until you came to the class that wields the blackjack and picks pockets and dynamites safes. The triumphant class became triumphant not by refinement and courtesy and consideration, but by defiance of those fundamentals of civilization—by successful defiance of them. It remained the triumphant class by keeping that primal savagery of nature. As soon as any member of it began to grow tame—gentle, considerate, except where consideration for others would increase his own wealth and power, became really a disciple of the sweet gospel he professed and urged upon others—just so soon did he begin to lose his wealth into the strong unscrupulous hands ever reaching for it—and with waning wealth naturally power and prestige waned.
No, I did not refuse because I thought the triumphant class would contemptuously repel any attempt tocarry its social doors by assault. I saw plainly enough that I could compel enough of these society leaders to receive my wife and daughters to insure their position. You have seen swine gathered about a trough, comfortably swilling; you have seen a huge porker come running with angry squeal to join the banquet. You have observed how rudely, how fiercely he is resented and fought off by the others. This, until he by biting and thrusting has made a place for himself; then the fact that he is an intruder and the method of his getting a place are forgotten, and the swilling goes peacefully forward. So it is, gentle reader, though it horrifies your hypocrisy to be told it, so do human beings conduct themselves round a financial or political or social swill trough. I should have had small difficulty in biting and kicking a satisfactory place for Edna and Margot at the social swill trough; I should have had no difficulty at all in keeping it for them. But——
You will be incredulous, gentle reader, devoured of snobbishness and dazzled by what you have heard and read of the glories of fashionable society in the metropolis. You will be incredulous, because you, too, like the overwhelming majority of the comfortable classes in this great democracy—and many of the not so comfortable classes as well—because you, too, are infected of the mania for looking about for some one who refuses to associate with you on the ground that you are “common,” and for straightway making it your heart’s dearest desire to compel that person to associate with you. You will be incredulous when I tell you my sole reason was my hatred and horror ofwhat seemed to me the degrading, vulgar, and rotten longings that filled my wife and that had infected my daughter. That hatred and horror had thrown me into a state of mind I did not dare confess to myself. You are incredulous; but perhaps you will admit I may be truthful when I explain that the reason for my moral and sentimental revolt was perhaps in large part my dense ignorance of the whole society side of life.
No doubt in the Passaic public school of my boyhood there had been as much snobbishness as there is in Fifth Avenue. But I had somehow never happened to notice it. It must have been there; it must be elemental in human nature; how else account for my wife? We hear more about the snobbishness of Fifth Avenue than we do about the snobbishness of the tenements. But that is solely because Fifth Avenue is more conspicuous. Also, Fifth Avenue, supposedly educated, supposedly broadened by knowledge and taste, has no excuse for petty vanities that belong only to the ignorant. And if Fifth Avenue were really educated, really had knowledge and taste, it could not be snobbish. However, my busy life had never been touched by social snobbishness. I preferred to know and to associate with men better educated and richer than I, but for excellent practical reasons—because from such men I could get the knowledge and the wealth I needed. But I would not have wasted a moment of my precious time upon the men most exalted in fashionable life—the ignorant incompetents who had inherited their wealth. They seemed ridiculous and worthless to me, a man of thought and action.
So, the sudden exposure of my wife’s and my little girl’s disease gave me a shock hardly to be measured by the man or woman used all his life to the social craze. It was much as if I had suddenly seen upon their bared bosoms the disgusting ravages of cancer.
As I could not devise any line of action that, however faintly, promised results, I kept away from home. I absorbed myself in some new enterprises that filled my evenings, which I spent at my club with the men I drew into them. At the mention of club, gentle reader, I see your ears pricking. You are wondering what sort of clubIbelonged to. I shall explain.
It was the Amsterdam Club. You may have seen and gawked at its vast and imposing red sandstone front in middle Fifth Avenue. As you drove by in the “rubber-neck” wagon, the man with the megaphone may have shouted: “The Amsterdam Club, otherwise known as the Palace of Plutocracy. The total wealth of its members is one tenth of the total wealth of the United States. Every great millionaire in New York City belongs to it. The reason you see no one in the magnificent windows is because the plutocrats are afraid of cranks with pistol or bomb.” And you stared and envied and craned your neck backward as the sight-seeing car rolled on. A fairly accurate description of my club. But you will calm as I go on to tell you the inside truth about it. It was built to provide a club for those rich men of New York who had no social position, and so could not be admitted to the fashionable clubs. It was not built by those outcastsfor whom it was intended, but by the rich men of the fashionable world. They did not build it out of pity nor yet out of generosity, but for freedom and convenience.
You must know that the rich, both the fashionables and the excludeds, are intimately associated in business. Now, in the days before the Amsterdam Club, if a rich fashionable wished to talk business out of office hours with a rich unfashionable, he had to take him to his home or to his club, one or the other. You will readily appreciate that either course involved disagreeable complications. The rich unfashionable would say: “Why am I not invited to this snob’s housesocially? Why does not this hound see that I am elected to his elegant club? I’ll teach this wrinkle-snout how to spit at me. I’ll slip a stiletto into his back, damn him.” As the number of rich unfashionables increased, as the number of stealthy financial stilettoings for social insult grew and swelled, the demand for a “way out” became more clamorous and panicky. The final result was the Amsterdam Club—perhaps by inspiration, perhaps by accident. And so it has come to pass that now, when a rich fashionable wishes to talk finance with a rich pariah, he does not have to run the risk of defiling his home or his exclusive club. With the gracious cordiality wherefor aristocracy is famed in song and story, he says: “Let us go toourclub”—for, the rich fashionables see to it that every rich pariah is elected to the Amsterdam immediately he becomes a person of financial consequence. And I fancy that not one in ten of the rich pariah members dreams how he is being insulted andtricked. All, or nearly all, imagine they are elected by favor of the great fashionable plutocrats to about the most exclusive club in New York. Also, not one in a dozen of the fashionable members appreciates how he is degrading himself—for, to my quaint mind, the snob degrades only himself.
Well! Not many months after we moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan I was elected to the Amsterdam—I, in serene ignorance of the trick that was being played upon me by my sponsors, associates in large financial deals and members of several exclusive really fashionable clubs. They pulled regretful faces as they talked of the “long waiting lists at most of the clubs.” They brightened as they spoke of the Amsterdam—“the finest and, take it all round, the most satisfactory of the whole bunch, old man. And we believe we’ve got pull enough to put you in there pretty soon. We’ll work it, somehow.” If I had known the shrivel-hearted trick behind their genial friendliness, I should not have minded, should probably have laughed. For, human littlenesses do not irritate me; and I have a vanity—I prefer to call it a pride—that lifts me out of their reach. I am of the one aristocracy that is truly exclusive, the only one that needs no artificial barriers to keep it so. But I shall not bore you, gentle reader, by explaining about it. You are interested only in the aristocracies of rank and title and wealth that are nothing but the tawdry realization of the tawdry fancies of the yokel among his kine and the scullery maid among her pots. For, who but a tossed-up yokel or scullery maid would indulge in such vulgarities as sitting upona gold throne or living in a draughty, cheerless palace or seeking to make himself more ridiculous by aggravating his littleness with a title, like the ass in the lion’s skin? Did it ever occur to you, gentle reader, that aristocracy is essentially common, essentially vulgar? To a large vision the distinction between king and carpenter, between the man with a million dollars and the million men with one dollar looks trivial and unimportant. Only a squat and squinting soul in a cellar and blinking through the twilight could discover agitating differences of rank between Fifth Avenue and Grand Street, between first floor front and attic rear, between flesh ripening to rot in silk and flesh ripening to rot in cotton. To an infinitesimal insect an infinite gulf yawns between the molecules of a razor’s edge.
I often found my club a convenience, for in those busiest days of my financial career I had much private conferring—or conspiring, if you choose. Never had I found it so convenient as when for the first time there was pain and shrinking at the thought of going home, of seeing my wife and Margot. My Margot! When she was a baby how proudly I had wheeled her along the sidewalks of Passaic in the showy perambulator we bought for her—and the twenty-five dollars it cost loomed mighty big even to Edna. And in Brooklyn, what happy Sundays Edna and I had had with her, when I would hire a buggy at the livery stable round the corner and we would go out for the day to some Long Island woods; or when we would take her down to the respectable end of Coney Island to dig in thesand and to wade after the receding tide. My Margot! No longer mine; never again to be mine.
One evening I had an appointment at the Amsterdam with a Western millionaire, Charles Murdock, whom I had interested in a Canada railway to tap a Hudson Bay spruce forest. He was having trouble with his wife and something of it had come out in the afternoon newspapers. At the last moment his secretary—who, by the way, afterwards married the divorced Mrs. Murdock—telephoned that Murdock could not keep his engagement to dine. I looked about for some one to help me eat the dinner I had ordered. There are never many disengaged men in the Amsterdam. The fashionable rich come only when they have business with the pariahs. The pariahs prefer their own houses or the barrooms and cafés of the big hotels. I therefore thought myself lucky when I found Bob Armitage sulking in a huge leather chair and got him to share my dinner. Armitage was one of my railway directors. He had helped me carry through the big stroke that made me, had joined in half a dozen of my enterprises in all of which I had been successful. There was no man of my acquaintance I knew and liked so well as Armitage. Yet it had so happened that we had never talked much with each other, except about business.
It promised to be a silent dinner. He was as deep in his thoughts as I was in mine—and our faces showed that neither of us was cogitating anything cheerful. On impulse I suddenly said:
“Bob, do you know about fashionable New York society?”
I knew that he did; that is to say, I had often heard he was one of the heavy swells, having all three titles to fashion—wealth, birth, and marriage. But I now pretended ignorance of the fact; when you wish to inform yourself thoroughly on a subject you should always select an expert, tell him you know nothing and bid him enlighten you from the alphabet up.
“Why do you ask?” said Armitage. “Do you want to get in? I had a notion you didn’t care for society—you and your wife.”
Armitage didn’t go to Holy Cross, but to St. Bartholomew’s. So he had never known of my wife’s activities, knew only the sort of man I was.
“Oh, I forgot,” he went on. “You’ve a daughter almost grown. I suppose you want her looked after. All right. I’ll attend to it for you. Your wife won’t mind my wife’s calling? I’d have sent her long ago—in fact, I apologize for not having done it. But I hate the fashionable crowd. They bore me. However, your wife may like them. Women usually do.”
It was at my lips to thank him and decline his offer. Then it flashed into my mind that perhaps my one hope of getting back my wife and daughter, of restoring them to sanity, lay in letting them have what they wanted. Another sort of man might have deluded himself with the notion that he could set his foot down, stamp out revolt, compel his family to do as he willed. But I happen not to be of that instinctively tyrannical and therefore inherently stupid temperament.
Armitage ate in silence for a few moments, then said:
“I’ll have you elected to the Federal Club.”
“This club is all I need,” said I.
He smiled sardonically. I didn’t understand that smile then, because I didn’t know anything about caste in New York. “You let me look after you,” said he. “You’re a child in the social game.”
“I’ve no objection to remaining so,” said I.
“Quite right. There’s nothing in it,” said he. “But you must remember you’re living in a world of rather cheap fools, and they are impressed by that nothing. On the other side of the Atlantic the social prizes have a large substantial value. Over here the value’s small. Still it’s something. You wouldn’t refuse even a trading stamp, would you?”
I laughed. “I refuse nothing,” said I. “I take whatever’s offered me. If I find I don’t want it, why, what’s easier than to throw it away?”
“Then I’ll put you in the Federal Club. You could have made me do it, if you had happened to want it. So, why shouldn’t I do it anyhow, in appreciation of your forbearance? You don’t realize, but I’m doing for you what about two thirds of the members of this club would lick my boots to get me to do for them.”
“I had no idea the taste for shoe polish was so general here,” said I.
“It’s a human taste, my dear Loring,” replied he. “It’s as common as the taste for bread. All the men have it. As for the women they like nothing so well. Having one’s boots licked is the highest human joy. Next comes licking boots.”
“You don’t believe that?” said I, for his tone was almost too bitter for jest.
“You aren’t acquainted with your kind, old man,” retorted he.
“I don’t know the kind you know,” said I. And then I remembered my wife and my daughter. There must be truth in what Armitage had said; for, my beautiful wife and my sweet daughter, both looking so proud—surely they could not be rare exceptions in their insensibility to what seemed to me elemental self-respect.
“You don’t know your kind,” he went on, “because you don’t indulge in cringing and don’t encourage it. You’re like the cold, pure-minded woman who goes through the world imagining it a chaste and austere place because her very face silences and awes sensuality. You are part of the small advance guard of a race that is to come.” He grinned satirically. “Perhaps you’ll drop out in the next few months. We’ll see.”
When the silence was again broken, it was broken by me. “Do you know a school kept by a woman named Ryper?” I inquired.
“Sure I do,” replied he. He gave me a shrewd laughing glance. “The daughter isn’t learning anything?”
“Nothing but mischief,” said I.
“That’s what Ryper’s for. But what does it matter? Why should a woman learn anything? They’re of no consequence. The less a man has to do with them the better off he will be.”
“They’re of the highest consequence,” said I bitterly.“They have the control of the coming generation.”
“And a hell of a generation it’s to be,” cried he, suddenly rousing from the state of bored apathy in which he seemed to pass most of his time. “You’ve got me started on the subject that’s a craze with me. I have only one strong feeling—and that is my contempt for woman—the American woman. I’m not speaking about the masses. They don’t count. They never did. They never will. No one counts until he gets some education and some property. I suppose the women of the masses do as well as could be expected. But how about the women of the classes with education and property? Do you know why the world advances so slowly?—why the upper classes are always tumbling back and everything has to be begun all over again?”
“I’ve a suspicion,” said I. “Because the men are fools about the women.”
“The sex question!” cried Armitage. “That’s the only question worth agitating about. Until it’s settled—or begins to be settled—and settled right, it’s useless to attempt anything else. The men climb up. The women they take on their backs become a heavier and heavier burden—and down they both drop—and the children with them. Selfish, vain, extravagant mothers, crazy about snobbishness, bringing up their children in extravagance, ignorance and snobbishness—that’s America to-day!”
“The men are fools about the women, and they let the women make fools of themselves.”
“The men are fools—but not about the women,”said Armitage. “How much time and thought for your family have you averaged daily in the last ten years?”
“I’ve been busy,” said I. “I’ve had to look out for the bread and butter, you know.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed he, in triumph. “You think you’re fond of your family. No doubt you are. But the bottom truth is you’re indifferent to your family. I can prove it in a sentence: You attend to anything you care about; and you haven’t attended to them.”
I stared at him like a man dazzled by a sudden light—which, in fact, I was.
“Guilty or not guilty?” said he, laughing.
“Guilty,” said I.
“The American man, too busy to be bothered, turns the American woman loose—gives her absolute freedom. And what is she? A child in education, a child in experience, a child in taste. He turns her loose, bids her do as she likes—and, up to the limit of his ability gives her all the money she wants. He prefers her a child. Her childishness rests his tired brain. And he doesn’t mind if she’s a little mischievous—that makes her more amusing.”
“You are married—have children,” said I, too serious to bother about tact. “How is it with you?”
He laughed cynically. “Don’t speak of my family,” said he. “I tried the other way. But I’ve given up—several years ago. What canonedo in a crazy crowd?”
“Not much,” confessed I, deeply depressed.
“The women stampede each other,” he went on. “Besides, no American woman—none that I know—has been brought up with education enough to enable her to make a life for herself, even when the man tries to help her. To like an occupation, to do anything at it, you’ve got to understand it. Being a husband and father is an occupation, the most important one in the world for a man. Being a wife and mother is an occupation—the most important one in the world for a woman. Are American men and women brought up to those occupations—trained in them—prepared for them? The most they know is a smatter at the pastime of lover and mistress—and they’re none too adept at that.”
“I believe,” said I, “that in my whole life I’ve never learned so much in so short a time.”
“It’ll do you no good to have learned,” rejoined Armitage. “It will only make you sad or bitter, according to your mood. Or, perhaps some day you may reach my plane of indifference—and be amused.”
“Nothing is hopeless,” said I.
“The American woman is hopeless,” said he. “Her vanity is triple-plated, copper-riveted. She’s hopeless so long as the American man will give her the money to buy flattery at home and abroad; for, so long as you can buy flattery, you never find out the truth about yourself. And the American man will give her the money as long as he can, because it buys him peace and freedom. He doesn’t want to be bothered with the American woman—except when he’s in a certain mood that doesn’t last long.”
“There are exceptions,” said I—not clear as to what I meant.
“Yes—there are exceptions,” said he. “There are American men who spend time with the American woman. And what does she do to them? Look at the poor asses!—neglecting their business, letting their minds go to seed. They don’t make her wise. She makes them foolish—as foolish as herself—and her children.”
You may perhaps imagine into what a state this talk of Armitage’s threw me. He was talking generalities. But every word he spoke went straight home to me. He had torn the coverings from my inmost family life, had exposed its soul, naked and ugly, to my fascinated gaze.
He finished dinner, lighted a cigarette—sat back watching me with a mysterious smile, half amused, wholly sympathetic, upon his handsome face, younger than his forty-five years—for he was considerably older than I. I was hardly more than barely conscious of that look of his, or of his presence. Suddenly I struck my fist with violence upon the arm of my chair. And I said:
“Iwilldo something! It isnothopeless!”
He shook his head slowly, at the same time exhaling a cloud of smoke. “I tried, Godfrey,” said he, “and I had a better chance of success than you could possibly have. For my wife had been brought up by a sensible father and mother in a sensible way, and she had been used to fashionable society all her life and, when I married her, seemed to have proved herself immune.A few years and—” His cynical smile may not have been genuine. “She leads the simpletons. But you’ll see for yourself.”
“When you know what to do, and feel as you do,” said I, “why did you suggest our going into your society?”
“It isn’t mine,” laughed he. “It’s my wife’s. It doesn’t belong to the men. It belongs to the women.”
“Into your wife’s society?” persisted I.
“Why did I suggest it? Because I wished to please you, and I know you like to please your wife. And she’s an American woman—therefore, society mad. She has her daughter at the Ryper joint, hasn’t she?”
I sat morosely silent.
“Oh, come now! Cheer up!” cried he, with laughing irony. “After all, you can’t blame the American woman. She has no training for the career of woman. She has no training for any serious career. She’s got to do something, hasn’t she? Well, what is there open to her but the career of lady? That doesn’t call for brains or for education or for taste. The dressmaker and milliner supply the toilet. The architect and decorator and housekeeper and staff supply the grand background. Father or husband supplies the cash. A dip into a novel or book of culture essays supplies the gibble-gabble. A nice easy profession, is lady—and universally admired and envied. No, Loring, it isn’t fair to blame her.”
We strolled down Fifth Avenue. After he had watched the stream of elegant carriages and automobiles,some of the too elegant automobiles having their interiors brightly lighted that the passersby might not fail to see the elaborate toilets of the occupants—after he had observed this procession of extravagance and vanity, with only an occasional derisive laugh or “Look there! Don’t miss that lady!” he burst out again in his pleasantly ironical tone:
“How fat the women are getting!—the automobile women! And how the candy shops are multiplying. Candy and automobiles!—and culture. Let us not forget culture.”
“No, indeed,” said I grimly. “Let’s not forget the culture.”
“I was telling my wife yesterday,” said Armitage, “what culture is. It is talking in language that means nothing about things that mean less than nothing. But watch the ladies stream by, all got up in their gorgeous raiment and jewels. What have they ever done, what are they doing, that entitles them to so much more than their poor sisters scuffling along on the sidewalk here?”
“They’ve talked and are talking about culture,” said I. “And don’t forget charity.”
“Ah—charity!” cried he gayly. “Thank you. I see we understand each other.” He linked his arm affectionately in mine. “Charity! It’s the other half of a lady’s occupation. Charity! Having no fancy for attending to her own business, she meddles in the business of the poor, tempting them to become liars and paupers. Your fine lady is a professional patronizer. She has no usefulness to contribute to the world.So, she patronizes—the arts with her culture—the poor with her charity, and the human race with her snobbishness.”
He was so amused by his train of thought that he lapsed into silence the more fully to enjoy it; for, every thought has its shadings that cannot be expressed in words yet give the keenest enjoyment. When he spoke again, it was to repeat:
“And what have these ladies done to entitle them to this luxury? Are they, perchance, being paid for giving to the world, and for inspiring, the noble sons and daughters who drive coaches and marry titles?”
“But what do we men do? What doIdo—that entitles me to so much more than that chap perched on the hansom? I often think of it. Don’t you?”
“Never,” laughed Armitage. “I never claw my own sore spots. There’s no fun in that. Always claw the other fellow’s. There’s a laugh and distraction for your own troubles in seeing him wince.”
“Is that why you’ve been clawing mine?” said I.
We were pausing before his big house, at the corner of the Avenue. “If I have been I didn’t know it,” said he. He glanced up at his windows with a satirical smile. “This evening I’ve been breaking my rule and clawing at my own.” He put out his hand. “Let the social business take its course,” advised he with impressive friendliness. “You and I can’t make the world over. To fight against the inevitable merely increases everyone’s discomfort.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said I.
I agreed with his conclusion that it was best to letthings alone, though I reached that conclusion by a different route. I had in mind my forlorn hope of good results from a homeopathic treatment. I saw how impossible it was to undo the practically completed training of a grown girl. I appreciated the absurdity of an attempt radically to change Edna’s character—an absurdity as great as an attempt to make her a foot taller or to alter the color of her eyes. The one hope, it seemed to me—and I still think I was right—was that, when they had social position, when there should no longer be excuse for fretting lest some one were thinking them common, they might calm down toward some sort of sanity.
Bear in mind, please, that at the time I did not have the situation, nor any idea of it, and of how to deal with it, definitely and clearly in mind. I was groping, was seeing dimly, was not even sure that I saw at all. I was like a thousand other busy American men who, after years of absorption in affairs, are abruptly and rudely awakened to the fact that there is something wrong at home where they had been flattering themselves everything was all right.
The things Armitage had said occupied my mind, almost to the exclusion of my business. The longer I revolved them, the better I understood the situation at home. I could not but wonder what wretched catastrophe in his domestic life had made him so insultingly bitter against women. I felt that he was unfair to them; any judgment that condemned a class for possessing universal human weakness must be unfair. At the same time I believed he had excuse for being unfair—theexcuse of a man whose domestic life is in ruins. I began to see toward the bottom of the woman question—the nature and the cause of the crisis through which women were passing.
The modern world, as I had read history enough to know, had suddenly and completely revolutionized the conditions of life. The male sex, though poorly where at all equipped to meet the new conditions, still was compelled to meet them after a fashion. A river that for ages has moved quietly along in a deep bed, all in a night swells to many times its former size and plays havoc with the surrounding country. That was a fairly good figure for the new life science and machinery had suddenly forced upon the human race. The men living in the inundated region—where floods were unknown, where appliances, even ideas for combating them did not exist—the men, hastily, hysterically, incompetently, but with resolution and persistence, because forced by dire necessity, would proceed to deal with that vast new river. Just so were the men of our day dealing with the life of steam and electricity, of ancient landmarks of religion and morality swept away or shifted, of ancient industrial and social relations turned upside down and inside out. The men were coping with the situation after a fashion. But the women?
These unfortunate creatures, faced with the new conditions, were in their greater ignorance and incapacity and helplessness, trying to live as if nothing had occurred!—as if the old order still existed. And the men, partly through ignorance, partly through preoccupationwith the new order, partly through indifference and contempt veiled as consideration for the weaker sex, were encouraging them in their fatal folly. Was it strange that the women were deceived, remained unconscious of their peril? No, it was on the contrary inevitable. When men, though working away under and at the new conditions, still talked as if the old conditions prevailed, when preachers still preached that way, and orators still eulogized the thing that was dead and buried as if it lived and reigned, when in order to find out the change you had to disregard the speech, the professions, the confident assertions of all mankind and observe closely their actions only—when there was this universal unawareness and unpreparedness, how could the poor women be condemned?
I could not but admit to myself that in his account of the doings of the women Armitage was only slightly if at all exaggerating. But with my more judicial temperament that had won me fortune and leadership while hardly more than a youth, I could not join him in damning the women for their folly and idleness and uselessness.
So, the immediate result of Armitage’s talk was a gentler and thoroughly tolerant frame of mind toward my wife, both as to herself and as to what she had done to our daughter. After all, I had for wife only the typical woman—and a rarely sweet and charming example of the type. And my daughter was no worse, perhaps was better, than the average girl of her age and position. What did I think I had—or ought to have—in the way of wife and daughter, anyhow?What was this vague, sentimental dream of family life? If I were by some magic to find myself possessed of the sort of family I thought I wanted, wouldn’t I be more dissatisfied than at present? When I had a wife and a daughter wholookedso well and did nothing but what everyone around me regarded as right and proper, was I not unjust in my discontent?
I had not seen Edna or Margot for several days before my talk with Bob Armitage. I did not see Edna for several days afterwards, though I dined at home every evening and did not go out after dinner. I was debating how to make overtures toward a reconciliation when she came into my study. She had an air of coldness and constraint—the air of the woman who is inflicting severe punishment upon an offending husband by withholding herself from him. She said:
“Mrs. Robert Armitage has asked me to dine on Thursday evening.”
I replied hesitatingly: “Thursday— I’ve an engagement for Thursday—a dinner.”
In her agitation she did not note that I had not finished. Dropping her coldness, she flashed out fiercely:
“We’ve simplygotto accept! It’s our chance. We may not have it again. It’s what I’ve been waiting for ever since we moved to this house. And I can’t go alone. Oh, how selfish you are! You never think of anything but your own comfort. And you can’t or won’t realize any of the higher things of life for which I’m striving. It is too horrible!”
If any male reader of this story has known awoman who was, up to a certain time, always able to rouse a strong emotion in him—of love or anger, of pleasure or pain—a woman toward whom he could not be lukewarm, and if that reader can recall the day on which he faced that woman in a situation of stress and found himself calm and patient and kind toward her——
I was surprised to find that Edna was not moving me. Her loveliness did not stir a single tiny flame of passion. Her abuse did not excite resentment or dread. “Just a moment, my dear,” said I with the tranquillity of a judge. “I was trying to say that I would break my engagement.”
I saw that she did not believe me but imagined her outburst had terrified and cowed me into submission. How dispassionately I observed and judged!
“Accept, if you wish,” I went on. “I like Armitage. We’ve been friends for years.”
“Why didn’t you tell me so?” demanded she. “Why have you been plotting against me all this time?”
“You forbade me to speak of business,” said I. “So I have never spoken of my business friends.”
Her anger against me was almost beyond control. If she had been a lady born, if she had not had a past to live down, a childhood of vulgar surroundings and actions, she would have given way and abused like a fish wife. A lady born dares excesses of passion that a made lady, with her deep reverence for the ladylike, would shrink from. She said through clinched teeth:
“I find out that Mrs. Armitage, the leader of theyounger set, the most fashionable woman in New York, has been eager to know me for a long time. Andyouhave been preventing it!”
“How?” said I, amused, but not showing it.
“She called here the other day. She was as friendly as could be. We became friends at once. She said that for months she had been at her husband to get her leave to call on me, but that he and you, between you, had neglected to arrange it.”
I saw how this notion of the matter delighted her, and that the truth would enrage her, would make her dislike me more than ever. So, I held my peace and thought, for the first time, I believe, how tiresome a woman without a sense of humor could become—how tryingly tiresome.
“She and I are going to do a lot of things together,” continued Edna in the same intense humorless way. “I always knew that if I got a chance to talk with one of those women who could appreciate me, I’d have no further trouble. I knew I was wasting time on those religious fakirs and frumps, but I was always hoping that through them I’d somehow meet a woman of my own sort. Now I’ve met her, and something tells me I’ll have no further trouble.”
“Probably you’re right,” said I.
“How it infuriates me,” she went on, “to think I’d have been spared all the humiliations and heartaches I’ve suffered, if you had used your influence with Robert Armitage months—years ago. But no—you don’t want me to get on. You wanted to stick in the mud. So I had to suffer—and Margot, too.”
“Well, it’s all right now,” said I, probably as indifferently as I felt. Why had God seen fit to create women without the sense of humor? Perhaps to save men from falling altogether under their rule.
“The sufferings of that poor child!” cried Edna. “And the very day after Mrs. Armitage came, Gracie Fortescue asked her to a party, and all the girls have taken her up. Gracie Fortescue is a niece of Hilda Armitage. Her brother married a Fortescue.”
“Really?” said I. “And Margot is happy?”
“No thanks to you,” retorted Edna sourly.
“Well, plunge in, my dear,” said I, beginning to examine the papers before me on the desk. “Only—spare me as much as possible. I need all my time and strength for my work.”
“But you’ll have to go with me to dinners, and to the opera occasionally. I can’t do this thing altogether alone.”
“Say I’m an invalid. Say I’m away. They don’t want me, anyhow. Armitage doesn’t go with his wife.”
“But that’s different,” cried she in a fever. “Shehas always had social position. It doesn’t matter if people do talk scandal about her.Ican’t afford to cause gossip.”
“Why should they gossip? But no matter. I don’t want to worry with that—that higher life, let us call it. Or to be worried with it. Do the best you can for me. I’m a man’s man—always have been—always shall be. If you’ve got to have a man to take you about, dig up one somewhere. I’m willing to pay him well.”
“Always money!” exclaimed she in deep disgust.
I laughed. “Not a bad thing, money,” said I.
“It would never have got me Mrs. Armitage’s friendship,” said she loftily.
“You think so?” said I amiably. “All right, if it pleases you. But—take my advice, my dear—enjoy yourself to the limit with highfalutingtalkabout the worthlessness of money and that sort of rot. But don’t for a minute lose your point of view and convince yourself.”
“Thank God I’ve got a vein of refinement, of idealism in my nature,” said Edna. “I wouldn’t have as sordid an opinion of human nature as you have for anything in the world.”
“You can afford not to have it, my dear,” said I. “So long as I know the truth, and so make the necessary money to keep us going, you are free to indulge your lovely delusions. Have your beautiful, unmercenary friendship with Mrs. Armitage and the other ladies. I’ll continue to make it financially worth their husbands’ while to encourage the friendships.”
“I thought so!” cried she. “You believe Mrs. Armitage has taken me up for business reasons.”
“If you had been some poor woman—” I began mildly.
“Don’t be absurd!” cried my wife. “How could there be an equal and true friendship between Mrs. Armitage and a woman with none of the surroundings of a lady, and with no means of gratifying the tastes of a lady? But that doesn’t mean that Mrs. Armitage is a low, sordid woman. She has a beautiful nature.Money is merely the background of high society. It simply gives ladies and gentlemen the opportunity to set the standards of dress and manners and taste. And of course they’re careful whom they associate with. Who wants to be annoyed by adventurers and climbers and all sorts of dreadful mercenary, self-seeking people?”
“Who, indeed?” said I.
It gently appealed to my sense of the ridiculous, to see my wife thus changed in a twinkling into a defender and exponent of fashionable society. It was so deliciously feminine, as fantastically humorless, her sincere belief in the poppycock she was reeling off—the twaddle with which Mrs. Armitage had doubtless stuffed her. The sordidness, the vulgarity, the meanness, the petty cruelty, the snobbishness of fashionable people—all forgotten in a moment, hastily covered deep with the gilt and the tinsel of hypocritical virtues. What an amusing ass the human animal is! How stupidly unconscious of its own motives! How eagerly it attributes to itself all kinds of high motives for the ordinary, or scrubby, or downright mean actions—and attributes the same motives to its fellow asses, to make its own pretenses the more plausible! An amusing ass—but it would be more amusing if it were not so monotonously solemn, but laughed at itself occasionally.
However——
The atmosphere of our home now steadily improved. The servants began to respect us, where they had despised and had scarcely troubled themselves to conceal their contempt. The cook sent up more attractive—thoughI fear even less digestible—dishes. The butler addressed me with a gratifying servility. The maids developed unexpected talents, showing acquaintance with the needs and customs of a fashionable household. The housekeeper’s soul dropped from its theretofore insolently erect posture to all fours, and she attended to her duties. Edna became sweet and gracious. Margot grew merry and affectionate. All the result of Mrs. Armitage. We had been pariahs; we were of the elect.
I saw and felt the change distinctly at the time. But it is only in retrospect that I take the full measure—get its full humor—and pathos.
That Armitage dinner wastheevent of Edna’s life. She had been born; she had married; she had given birth—all memorable and important occurrences. But this formal début in fashionable society topped them as the peak tops the foothills. Having seen her quivering and hysterical excitement when we were leaving the house, I feared a breakdown. I marveled at her apparent calmness and ease as we entered the dining room of the Armitages. Never had she looked so well. If Mrs. Armitage had not been a self-satisfied beauty of the dark type she might have demolished Edna’s dream in its very realizing. But no doubt Edna, the shrewd, had duly measured Hilda Armitage and had discovered that it was safe to make her proud of the woman she had taken under protection and patronage.
There were but a dozen people in all at the dinner. It did not seem to be much of an affair. The drawing-room was plain—nothing gaudy, nothing costly looking.Our own dining room was much grander—to our then uneducated taste. The guests were—just people—simple, good-natured mortals, perfectly at their ease and putting us at our ease. You would have wondered, after five minutes of that company, how anyone could possibly find any difficulty in getting intimately acquainted with them. But, as Edna knew at a glance, she and I were in the midst of the innermost and smallest circle of the many circles one within another that make up New York fashionable society. If on the recommendation of the Armitages we should have the good fortune to be accepted by that circle of circles, that circle within the circles, there would be nothing of a social nature left for us to conquer in New York. I was ignorant of all this at the time; had I known, I imagine I should have remained tranquil. But Edna knew at a glance; she had been studying these matters for years. It shows what force of character she had that she conducted herself as if it were the most ordinary and familiar occasion of her life. She had always said, even away back in the days of the grand forty-dollars-a-month flat in Passaic, that she belonged at the social top. She was undoubtedly right. The way she acted when she arrived there proved it.
You do not often have the chance, gentle reader, to get so well acquainted with any human being as I have enabled you to get with Edna. Probably you do not even know yourself so well. Therefore I suspect that you have a wholly false notion of her—think her in every way much worse relatively than she was. Through your novels and through the reports your dim eyesbring to your narrow and shallow mind, you have acquired certain habits of judging your fellow beings.
You attach inflated importance to their unimportant surface qualities—physical appearance, pleasant voice and manner—and to their amiable little hypocrisies of apparent sweetness and generosity and friendliness. You do not see the real person—the human being. You, being by training a hypocrite and a believer in hypocrisies, scorn human beings. Now I prefer them to the sort of people with whom you and your false literature populate the world. In making you acquainted with Edna—and the others in my story—I have not introduced you to bad people, monsters, but to real beings of usual types, probably on the whole superior to your smug self in all the good qualities. Had you seen Edna in the Armitage house that evening you would have thought her as incapable of calculation and snobbishness as—well, as any of the others in that company whose whole lives were made up of calculation and snobbishness. She—and they—looked so refined and elevated. She—and they—talked so high-mindedly. I, who knew almost nothing at that time except business, was listener rather than talker; and you may be sure such a man as I, having such ignorance as mine to cover up, had in years of practice become somewhat adept in that saving art for the intelligent ignorant. But Edna——
She, the most expert of smatterers, fairly shone. With her beauty and vivacity, her eloquent eyes and dazzling smile, and exquisite bare shoulders, to aid her, she created an impression of brilliancy.
“You had a good time?” said I, when we were in the motor for the home journey.
“I never had as good a time in my life,” she exclaimed, her voice tremulous with ecstasy. “Did I look well?”
“Never so well,” said I. “And you made a hit.”
“I was careful to cultivate the women,” said she. “I’ve got to get the women.”
“You’ve got them,” I declared sincerely.
“You’re sure I didn’t make some of them jealous? Did you see any signs?”
“They liked you,” said I.
“I had to play my cards well,” pursued she. “It was a difficult position. I was far and away the best looking woman there, with the possible exception of Mrs. Armitage. Did you hear her call me Edna?”
“You and Mrs. Armitage look well together. You are of about the same figure, and the contrast of coloring is very good.”
“That’s why we took to each other so quickly. Each of us sets off the other.”
“How did you like Armitage?” I asked.
“Oh, well enough,” said she indifferently. “I hardly noticed him—or the other men. I had my game to play. The men don’t count in the social game. It’s the women. I shall be nervous until I find out whether I really got them. They are such cats!—so mean and sly and jealous. Idetestwomen!”
“I prefer men, myself,” said I.
“Men!” She laughed scornfully. “I think men are intolerable—American men. They say foreignersare better. But American men—they know nothing but dull business or politics. They have no breadth—no idealism. The women are far superior to the men.”
I laughed. “No doubt you women are too good for us,” said I carelessly. “We’re grateful that you don’t scorn us too much even to accept our money.”
“How coarse that is! Don’t spoil the happiest evening of my life.”
We were at home, so she could escape from me. And I, for my part, was as glad to be quit of her society as she could possibly have been to get rid of me. I was beginning to realize that her conversation bored me, that it had always bored me, that it was her sex and only her sex that interested me. And latterly even this had lost its charm. Why?
I have observed—and perhaps you have observed it, too—that people of wealth and position, unless they have very striking individuality indeed, are usually utterly devoid of charm. It is difficult to become interested in them, to establish any sort of sympathetic current. And you will notice that fashionable functions are dull, essentially dull; that the animation is artificial, is supplied from without by an orchestra or entertainers, and fails to infect the company. It was long before I discovered the explanation for this. I at first thought it was the stupidity that comes from a surfeit of the luxuries and pleasures. But I am now convinced that this familiar explanation is not the true one; that the true one is the excessive, the really preposterous self-centeredness of people of rank and wealth. From waking until sleeping they are surrounded by hirelings andsycophants who think and talk only of them. Thus the rich man or woman gets into the habit of concentrating upon self. Now the essence of charm is giving—giving oneself out in sympathetic interest in one’s fellows. How can people, all whose faculties are trained to work in upon themselves—how can they have charm? An egotist, one whotalksonly of himself, may have charm because he gives you the impression that he is trying to please you, that he thinks you so important that he wishes you to be sensible of his importance. But the egotist who, whatever hetalks,thinksonly of himself—he is not only dull and bored but also a diffuser of dullness and boredom. And that is how their servants and their sycophants make the rich and the fashionable so dreary.
I imagine some such effect as this was being produced upon my wife by her surroundings of luxury. I think that may account for her long decreasing charm for me. At any rate, soon after she was well launched on her Elysian sea of fashion—that is to say, soon after she ceased to have any check of social seeking to restrain her from centering all her thoughts and actions upon herself, she lost the last bit of her charm for me. She became radiantly beautiful. Her face took on a serene and refinedly assured expression that made her extravagantly admired on every hand. She became gracious to me and almost as sweet as she had been before we moved to New York. She even let me see that, if I so desired, she would condescend to be on terms of wifely affection with me again. But I did not so desire. I liked her. I admired her energy, hertoilets, and, quite impersonally, her aristocratic beauty. But I was content to be a bachelor, and I was grateful when she began to relieve me of the tediousness of going about in her train.
My substitute was an architect, Leon MacIlvane by name—a handsome young fellow of about my wife’s age, though he thought her much younger, despite Margot’s age and appearance. With his poetic dark eyes and classic features, and rich, deep voice, MacIlvane had long been a favorite with the young married women of the Armitage set. He was indeed a valuable asset. The rich unmarried men were not especially interesting; also, they were needed by the marriageable girls. MacIlvane, not a marrying man and never making any mother uneasy by so much as an interested glance at a daughter intended for a rich husband, devoted himself to married women.
“I do not care for girls,” he said to me. “They are too colorless.”
“Why bother with women at all?” said I. “Aren’t they all colorless? What do they know about life? What experience have they had?”
“An intelligent woman’s mind is the complement of an intelligent man’s mind,” said he, as if this trite old fallacy were a brilliant discovery of his own making. “Women stimulate me, give me ideas.”
“Oh, I see,” said I practically. “Business. Yes, an architect does deal chiefly with the women.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said he, showing as much anger as he dared show the husband of the woman to whom he had attached himself.
“Where’s the harm in it?” said I encouragingly. “You’ve got to make a living—haven’t you? It’s good sense for a business man to cultivate his customers.”
He, the poseur and the small man, hated this plain truthful way of dealing with his profession. Like all chaps of that kidney he thought only of himself and of appearances, and sought to degrade a noble profession to the base uses of his vanity. In fact, he had begun with my wife because of the orders he hoped to get—for, he suspected that once she looked about her in the fashionable world from the new viewpoint of a fashionable person, she would want changes in her house to make it less vividly grand. He believed she would let Hilda Armitage educate her; and Hilda, unlike most of her friends, liked the quiet kinds of ostentation and costliness. And he guessed correctly. He was well paid for undertaking to replace me as escort—so far as I could be replaced without causing scandal—and, thank heaven, that was very far in the New York of busy and bored husbands, detesting the gaudy gaddings their wives loved.
Soon he was serving my wife for other reasons than pay. I saw something of him from time to time, and I presently began to note a change in his manner toward me—a formal politeness, an exaggeration of courtesy. I spoke to Armitage about it. Armitage and I had become the most intimate of friends—knocked about together in the evenings, were more closely associated than ever in business.
“Bob,” said I to Armitage, “what ails that ass,MacIlvane? He treats me as if he were in love with my wife.”
Armitage laughed. “That’s it,” said he. “My wife’s spaniel, Courtleigh, who writes poetry, treats me the same way. Get any anonymous letters yet?”
“Two,” said I.
“Servants,” said he. “I suppose you burnt them? You didn’t show them to your wife?”
“Heavens, no,” replied I. “Why unsettle her? Why upset a pleasant arrangement? My wife finds MacIlvane useful. I find him invaluable. He saves me hours of time. He spares me hours of boredom.”
“My feeling about Courtleigh,” said Armitage. “And both those chaps are comfortably trustworthy.”
“I hadn’t thought of MacIlvane in that way,” said I. “I know my wife—and that’s enough.”
Armitage reflected with an amused smile on his face. Finally, he said: “I don’t suppose there ever were since the world began so thoroughly trustworthy women as these American women of the fashionable crowd—those that have very rich husbands—and only those, of course, are really fashionable. They may flirt a little, but never anything serious—never anything that’d give their husbands an excuse for throwing them out—and lose them their big houses and big incomes and social leadership.”
I had not thought of these aspects of the matter. I based my feeling of security solely on my knowledge of my wife’s intense self-absorption. All the springs of sentiment—except the shallow spring of highfaluting talk—had dried up in her. She would listen to MacIlvane’sflatteries as long as he cared to pour them out. But if he ever tried to get her to think ofhim, she would feel outraged.
“I suppose,” pursued Armitage, “we’d be tremendously amused if we could overhear those chaps talking to our wives about us. They don’t dare presume to the extent of mentioning our names. But they hand out generalities of roasting—how stupid most American men are, how superior the women are, what a tragic condescension for a wonderful American woman to have to live with a man who couldn’t appreciate her.”
I nodded and laughed.
“Nothing a woman loves so much—an American woman with a little miseducation befogging her mind and fooling her as to its limited extent—nothing she so dearly loves as to hear that she has a great intellect and a great soul, complex, mysterious, beyond the comprehension of the vulgar male clods about her. That’s why they like foreigners. You ought to watch those foreign chaps flatter our women—make perfect fools of them.”
But I had no desire to watch women in any circumstances. I had no active resentment against them as had Armitage. I simply wished to be let alone, to be free to pursue my ambitions and my ideas of self-development. I had ceased to feel about Margot. I was merely glad she was not a boy; for I felt that if she were a boy, I should have to assert myself and do some drastic and disagreeable—and almost certainly disastrous—disciplining in my family.
About a year and a half after my wife achieved her ambition, I began to feel that she was spiritually bearing down upon me in pursuance of some new secret plan.
During the year and a half she had been playing the fashionable social game with the strenuous enthusiasm which only a woman—I had almost said only an American woman—seems able to inject into the pursuit of objects that are of no consequences whatsoever. And, in spite of the useful MacIlvane I had been compelled to assist her far more than was to my liking. I went about enough to get a thorough insight into fashionableness—and a profound distaste for it. Of the many phases, ludicrous, repellent, despicable, pitiful, there was one that made a deep impression upon me. It amazed me to find that the “best” class of people was, if possible, more vulgarly snobbish than the class from which I had come—even than the “Brooklyn bounders.” I could not comprehend—I cannot comprehend—how those who have had the best opportunities are no more intelligent, no broader of mind than those who have had no opportunities at all. The ignorance, the narrowness of the men and women of the comfortable classes!—the laziness of their minds!—the shallow cant about literature, art and the like! Really, intelligence, activity of mind, seems confined to the few who are pushing upward; and the masses of mankind in all classes seem contented each class with its own peculiar wallow of ignorance.
But to Edna’s secret plan. If you are a married man you will at once understand what I mean when Ispeak of having a vague sensation of being borne down upon. She said nothing; she did nothing. But I knew she was making ready to ask something to which she believed she could get my consent only by the use of all her tact and skill and charm—for she did not know her charms had ceased to charm, but thought them more potent than ever. I waited with patience and composure; and in due time she began cautious open approaches.
“Margot is almost ready to come out,” said she.
“Money?” said I, smiling.
She rebuked this coarseness amiably. “Everybodyisn’talwaysthinking of money, dear,” said she.
“But why talk tomeabout anything else? That’s my only department in the family.”
She deigned a smile for my pleasantry, then went on in her usual serious way: “I wish to consult you about her education.”
“Oh—finish as you’ve begun,” said I. “I suppose it’s the best that can be done for a girl.”
“But I can’t find what I want,” said she, with an expression of sweet maternal solicitude. “I’ve always been determined Margot should have the best education any girl in the whole world could get.”
“Go ahead,” said I. “See that she gets it.”
“She shall have the perfect equipment of a lady—of a woman of the world,” continued Edna, with growing enthusiasm. “She has the beauty to set it off—and we can afford to give it to her. I am willing to make any sacrifices that may be necessary.”
I pricked up my ears. I always do when anyone, male or female, uses that word sacrifice. I know a piece of selfishness is coming.
“As I was saying,” pursued Edna, with the serene look of the self-confident woman who is taking her husband in firm, strong hands, “I have been unable to find what I want for her. Mrs. Armitage tells me I’ll not find it except in Paris.”
“Well—why not go to Paris?” said I.
Did you ever lift an empty box that you thought full and heavy? My wife looked as if she had just done that exceedingly uncomfortable thing. “But I don’t see— I—I— It would be a terrible sacrifice to have to go and live in Paris,” stammered she.
“Then don’t do it,” said I.
“But I must think of Margot!” exclaimed she hastily.
“Oh, Margot seems to be stepping along all right. She’ll never miss what she doesn’t know about.”
“But you must realize, dear, what an education she’d get in Paris. And I suppose it would do me good, too. It’s a shame that I don’t speak French. Everyone except me speaks it. They all had French governesses when they were children.”
“Some of them had—and some hadn’t,” said I. “Armitage has told me things about your friends that make me suspect they’re doing fully as much bluffing as we are.”
She winced, and sighed the sigh of the lady patient with a low husband. “Then you think I ought to go?” said she.
“I think you ought to do as you like,” said I. “I always have thought so. I always shall.”
“And,” continued she absently, “the society over there must be charming. Really, I need the education as much as Margot does. I do surprisingly well, considering what my early opportunities were.”
“I’ve never once heard you give yourself away,” said I.
“I’m not that stupid,” replied she. “But—a while in France—on the Continent—and in England perhaps——”
“How long would you be gone?” interrupted I, to show her that all this beating round Robin’s barn was superfluous.
She gave me a coquettish look: “How long could you spare me?”
“I can’t tell till I’ve tried,” said I, with a gallant smile—but with no move toward her. You women who would be wise, distrust the gallantry that is content with speech and look.
“You understand,” pursued she, “if I started this thing I’d put it through—no matter how much I missed you or how homesick I was over there.”
“You always do put things through,” said I admiringly. “When have you planned to start?”
“I haven’t planned at all, as yet,” replied she—and I saw she thought I had set a trap for her, and was delighted with herself for having dodged it. Certainly never was there a husband with whom indirection was more unnecessary. Yet she would not realize this, partly because she had never bothered to discover whatmanner of man I was, partly because she had one of those natures that move only by secrecy and indirection.
“Do you expect me to go over with you?” inquired I.
“I only wish you would!” exclaimed she, but I distrusted her enthusiasm.
“Couldn’t MacIlvane take you over and settle you?”
Her face clouded. Her lip curled slightly. “I don’t like him as I did,” said she. “I’ve found out he’s ridiculously vain and egotistical.”
I laughed outright.
“What is it?” inquired she, elevating her eyebrows. She had always disapproved my sense of humor.
“So he’s been making love to you—eh?” said I.
“No, indeed!” cried she, bridling haughtily. “He’d not dare. But I saw he was beginning to presume in that direction, and I checked him.”
“Oh, he’s harmless,” said I. “Keep friendly with him. He’d be the very person to settle you in Paris. He lived there several years.”
“It would cause scandal,” said she. “If you can’t go, I can do well enough alone, I’m sure.”
“I’d only be in the way,” said I. “Let me know when you wish to go, and I’ll try to arrange it. But I can’t get away for at least three months.”
“That would be too late,” said she. “Margot must be started at once. She hasn’t any too much time before her coming out. Also, Mrs. Armitage is sailing in two weeks, and she would be a great help.”
“Then you have decided to sail in two weeks?”said I, adding before she had time to get beyond a gathering frown of protest, “That suits me. I’ll make my own plans accordingly.”
And in two weeks they sailed, I watching the big ship creep out of dock and drop slowly down the river. Armitage and I drove away from the pier together. We were in such high spirits that we had champagne with our lunch.