VII
Thatsummer Armitage was spending the week ends out on Long Island at the country place of his sister, Mrs. Kirkwood. He kept his yacht in the tiny harbor there and made short cruises in the Sound and up the New England coast. Naturally I often went with him. Those parties usually amused me. He knew a dozen interesting people—working people—such as Boris Raphael, the painter, and his wife, the architect, the Horace Armstrongs who had been divorced and remarried, a novelist named Beechman who wrote about the woods and lived in the wilderness in the Southwest most of the year, Susan Lenox the actress—several others of the same kind. Then there was his sister—Mary Kirkwood.
For a reason which will presently appear I have not before spoken of Mrs. Kirkwood, though I had known her longer than I had known Armitage. Her husband had been treasurer of the road when I was an under Vice President. He speculated in the road’s funds and it so happened that, when he was about to be caught, I was the only man who could save him from exposure. Instead of asking me directly, he sent his wife to me. I can see her now as she was that day—pale, haggard, but with that perfect composure which deceives the average human being into thinking, “Hereis a person without nerves.” She told me the whole story in the manner of one relating a matter in which he has a sympathetic but remote interest. She made not the smallest attempt to work upon my feelings, to move me to pity. “And,” she ended, “if you will help him cover up the shortage, it will be made good and he will resign. I shall see to it that he does not take another position of trust.”
“Why didn’t he come to me, himself?” said I. “Why did he send you?”
She looked at me—a steady gaze from a pair of melancholy gray eyes. “I cannot answer that,” said she.
“I beg your pardon,” stammered I; for I guessed the answer to my question even as I was asking it. I knew the man—an arrogant coward, with the vanity to lure him into doing preposterous things and wilting weakness the instant trouble began to gather. “You wish me to save him?” I said, still confused and not knowing how to meet the situation.
“I am asking rather for myself,” replied she. “I married him against my father’s wishes and warning. I have not loved him since the second month of our marriage. If he should be exposed, I think the disgrace would kill me.” Her lip curled in self-scorn. “A queer kind of pride, isn’t it?” she said. “To be able to live through the real shame, and to shrink only from the false.”
“I’ll do it,” said I, with a sudden complete change of intention. “That is, if you promise me he will resign and not try to get a similar position elsewhere.”
“I promise,” said she, rising, to show that she was taking not a moment more of my time than was unavoidable. “And I thank you”—and that was all.
I kept my part of the agreement; she kept hers. In about two years she divorced him because he was flagrantly untrue to her. He married the woman and supported her and himself on the allowance Mary Kirkwood made him as soon as her father’s death let her into her share of the property. When I saw her again—one night at dinner at her brother’s house, before his wife divorced him—we met as if we were entire strangers. Neither of us made the remotest allusion to that first meeting.
Going down to her house with Armitage often and being with her on the yacht for days together, I became fairly well acquainted with her, although she maintained the reserve which she did not increase for a stranger or drop even with her brother. You felt as if her personality were a large and interesting house, with room after room worth seeing, most attractive—but that no one ever was admitted beyond the drawing-room, not for a glimpse.
Don’t picture her as of the somber sort of person. A real tragedy can befall only a person with a highly sensitive nature. Such persons always have sense of proportion and sense of humor. They do not exaggerate themselves; they see the amusing side of the antics of the human animal. So they do not pull long faces and swathe themselves in yards of crêpe and try to create an impression of dark and gloomy sorrow. They do not find woe a luxury; they know it in itsgrim horror. They strive to get the joy out of life. So, looking at Mary Kirkwood, you would never have suspected a secret of sadness, a blighted life. As her reserve did not come from self-consciousness—either the self-consciousness of haughtiness or that of shyness and greenness—you did not even suspect reserve until you had known her long and had tried in vain to get as well acquainted with her as you thought you were at first. I imagine that in our talk in my office about her husband I got further into the secret of her than anyone else ever had.
One detail I shall put by itself, so important does it seem to me. She had a keen sense of humor. It was not merely passive, merely appreciation, as the sense of humor is apt to be in women—where it exists at all. It was also active; she said droll and even witty things. When her sense of humor was aroused, her eyes were bewitching.
What did she look like? The women all wish to know this; for, being fond of the evanescent triumphs over the male which beauty of face or form gives, and as a rule having experience only of those petty victories, they fancy that looks are the important factor, the all-important factor. In fact, the real conquests of women are not won by looks. Beauty, or, rather, physical charm of some kind, is the lure that draws the desired male within range. If after pausing a while he finds nothing more, he is off again.
Perhaps, probably, my experience with Edna has made me more indifferent to looks than the average man who has never realized his longing to possess a physicallybeautiful woman. However that may be, Mary Kirkwood certainly had no cause to complain that Nature had not been generous to her in the matter of looks. She was tall, she was slender. She had a delicate oval face, a skin that was clear and smooth and dark with the much prized olive tints in it. She had a beautiful long neck, a great quantity of almost black hair. Her nose suggested pride, her mouth mockery, her eyes sincerity. She was the kind of woman who exercises a powerful physical fascination over men, and at the same time makes them afraid to show their feelings. Women like that tantalize with visions of what they could and would give the man they loved, but make each man feel that it would be idle for him to hope. In character she was very different from her cynical, mocking brother—was, I imagine, more like her father. Mentally the resemblance between the brother and sister was strong—but she took pains to conceal how much she knew, where he found his chief pleasure in “showing off.” I feel I have fallen pitifully short of doing her justice in this description. But who can put into words such a subtlety as charm? She had it—for men. Women did not like her—nor she them. I state this without fear of prejudicing either women or men against her. Why is it, by the way, that to say a man does not like men and is not liked by them is to damn him utterly, while to say that a woman neither likes nor is liked by her own sex is rather to speak in her favor? You cry indignantly, “Not true!” gentle reader. But—doyouknow what is true and what not true? And, if you did, would you confess it, even to yourself?
You are proceeding to revenge yourself upon me. You are saying, “Nowwe knowwhyhe was indifferent to his beautiful wife and to his lovely daughter!—Nowwe understand that fit of guilty conscience in London!”
Do you know? Perhaps. I am not sure. I am not conscious of any especial interest in Mary Kirkwood until after I came back from London. I had seen her but a few times. We had never talked so long as five consecutive minutes, and then we had talked commonplaces. Not the commonplaces of fashionable people, but the commonplaces of intelligent people. There’s an enormous difference.
The first time my memory records her with the vividness of moving pictures is, of course, at that meeting in my office. The next time is a few days after my return from London. I had been surfeited both in London and on the steamer with the inane amateurs at life, the shallow elegant dabblers in it, interesting themselves only in coaching, bridge, and similar pastimes worthy an asylum for the feeble-minded. I went down to the Kirkwood place with Armitage. As his sister was not in the house we set out for a walk through the grounds to find her. At the outer edge of the gardens a workman told us that if we would follow a path through the swampy woods we could not miss her.
The path was the roughest kind of a trail. Our journey was beset with swarms of insects, most of them mosquitoes in savage humor. It lay along the course of a sluggish narrow stream that looked malarious and undoubtedly was. “Landscape gardening is one ofMary’s fads,” explained her brother. “She has been planning to tackle this swamp for several years. Now she is at it.”
In the depths of the morass we came upon her. She was in man’s clothes—laboring man’s clothes. Her face and neck were protected by veils, her hands by gloves. She was toiling away with a gang of men at clearing the ground where the drains were to center in an artificial lake. Armitage called several times before she heard. Then she dropped her ax and came forward to meet us. There was certainly nothing of what is usually regarded as feminine allure about her. Yet never had I seen a woman more fascinating. There undoubtedly was charm in her face and in her strong, slender figure. But I believe the real charm of charms for me was the spectacle of a woman usefully employed. A woman actually doing something. A woman!
After the greeting she said: “The only way I can get the men to work in this pesthole is by working with them.” She smiled merrily. “One doesn’t look so well as in a fresh tennis suit wielding a racket. But I can’t bear doing things that have no results.”
“My father insisted on bringing us up in the commonest way and with the commonest tastes,” said Armitage, “and Mary has remained even less the lady than I am the gentleman.”
As the mosquitoes were tearing us to pieces Mrs. Kirkwood ordered us back to the house. Before we were out of sight she was leading on her gang and wielding the ax again. At dinner she appeared in all the radiance and grace of the beautiful woman with fondness forand taste in dress. She explained to me her plan—how swamp and sluggish, rotting brook were to be transformed into a wooded park with a swift, clear stream and a succession of cascades. I may add, she carried out the plan, and the results were even beyond what my imagination pictured as she talked.
This first view of her life in the country set me to observing her closely—perhaps more closely and from a different standpoint than a man usually observes a woman. In all she did I saw the same rare and fascinating imagination—the only kind of imagination worth while. Of all its stupidities and follies none so completely convicts the human race of shallowness and bad taste as its notions of what is romantic and idealistic. The more elegant the human animal flatters itself it is, the poorer are its ideals—that is, the further removed from the practical and the useful. So, you rarely find a woman with so much true poetry, true romance, true imagination as to keep house well. But Mary Kirkwood kept house as a truly great artist paints a picture, as a truly great composer creates an opera. In all her house there was not a trace of the crude, costly luxury that rivals the squalor and bareness of poverty in repulsiveness to people of sense and taste. But what comfort! What splendid cooking, what perfection of service. The chairs and sofas, the beds, the linen, the hundred and one small but important devices for facilitating the material side of life, and so putting mind and spirit in the mood for their best— But I despair of making you realize. I should have to catalogue, describe, contrast through page after page. And when Ihad finished, those who understand what the phrase art of living means would have read only what they already know, while those who do not understand that phrase would be convulsed with the cackling laughter that is the tribute of mush-brain to intellect.
Observing Mary Kirkwood I discovered a great truth about the woman question: the crudest indictment of the intellect of woman is the crude, archaic, futile, and unimaginative way in which is carried on the part of life that is woman’s peculiar work—or, rather, is messed, muddled, slopped, and neglected. No doubt this is not their fault. But it soon will be if they don’t bestir themselves. Already there are American men not a few who apologize for having married as a folly of their green and silly youth.
So, gentle reader, though my enthusiasm tempts me to describe Mary Kirkwood’s housekeeping in detail, I shall spare you. You would not read. You would not understand if you did.
The first time she and I approached the confidential was on an August evening when we were alone on the upper deck of the yacht. The others were in the cabin playing bridge. We had been sitting there perhaps an hour when she rose.
“Don’t go,” said I.
“I thought you wished to be alone,” said she.
“Why did you think that?”
“Your way of answering me. You’ve been almost curt.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t promise to talk if you stay. But I hate to be left alone with my thoughts.”
“I understand,” said she. And she seated herself beside the rail, and with my assistance lighted a cigarette.
There was a moon somewhere above the awning which gave us a roof. By the dim, uncertain light I could make out her features. It seemed to me she was staying as much on her own account as on mine—because she, too, wished not to be alone with her thoughts. I had not in a long time seen her in a frankly serious mood.
“How much better off a man is than a woman,” said I. “A man has his career to think about, while a woman usually has only herself.”
“Only herself,” echoed she absently. “And if one is able to think, oneself is an unsatisfactory subject.”
“Extremely,” said I. “Faults, follies, failures.”
For a time I watched the faintly glowing end of her cigarette and the slim fingers that held it gracefully. Then she said:
“Do you believe in a future life?”
“Does anyone feelsureof any life but this?”
“Then this is one’s only chance to get what one wants—what’s worth while.”
“Whatisworth while?” I inquired, feeling the charm of her quiet, sweet voice issuing upon the magical stillness. “Whatisworth while?”
She laughed softly. “What one wants.”
“And what doyouwant?”
She drew her white scarf closer about her bare shoulders, smiled queerly out over the lazily rippling waters. “Love and children,” she said. “I’m a normal woman.”
That amused me. “Normal? Why, you’re unique—eccentric.Most women want money—and yet more money—and yet more money—for more and more and always more show.”
“You must want the same thing,” retorted she. “You’re too sensible not to know you can’t possibly do any good to others with money. So you must want it for your own selfish purposes. It’s every bit as much for show when you have it tucked away in large masses for people to gape at as if you were throwing it round as the women do.... If anything, your passion is cruder than theirs.”
“I think I make money,” said I, “for the same reasons that a hen lays eggs or a cow gives milk—because I can’t help it; because I can’t do anything else and must do something.”
“Did you ever try to do anything else?”
“No,” I admitted. Then I added, “I never had the chance.”
“True,” she said reflectively. “A hen can’t give milk and a cow can’t lay eggs.”
“For some time,” I went on, “I’ve been trying to find something else to do. Something interesting. No, not exactly that either. I must find some way of reviving my interest in life. The things I am doing would be interesting enough if I could be interested in anything at all. But I’m not.”
She nodded slowly. “I’m in the same state,” said she. “I’ve about decided what to do.”
“Yes?” said I encouragingly.
“Marry again,” replied she.
I laughed outright. “That’s very unoriginal,” saidI. “It puts you in with the rest of the women. Marrying is alltheycan think of doing.”
“But you don’t quite understand,” said she. “Iwant children. I am thinking of selecting some trustworthy man with good physical and mental qualities. I have had experience. I ought to be able to judge—and not being in love with him I shall not be so likely to make a mistake. I shall marry, and the children will give me love and occupation. You may laugh, but I tell you the only occupation worthy of a man or a woman is bringing up children. All the rest—for men as well as for women—is—is like a hen laying eggs to rot in the weeds.... Bringing up children to develop us, to give us a chance to make them an improvement on ourselves. That’s the best.”
As the full meaning of what she had said unfolded I was filled with astonishment. How clear and simple—how true. Why had I not seen this long ago—why had it been necessary to have it pointed out by another? “I believe—yes, I’m sure—that’s what I’ve been groping for,” I said to her.
“I thought you’d understand,” said she, and most flattering was her tone of pleasure at my obvious admiration.
Thus our friendship was born.
I could not but envy her freedom to seek to satisfy the longing I thus discovered in my own heart. So strongly did the mood for confidence possess me that only my long and hard training in self-restraint held me from the disloyalty of speaking my thoughts. I said:
“It’s dismal to grow old with no ties in the oncoming generation. The sense of the utter futility of life would weigh more and more heavily. I’m surprised that you’ve realized it so young.”
“A woman realizes it earlier than a man,” she reminded me. “For a woman has no career to interfere and prevent her seeing the truth.”
A woman! Rather, a rare occasional Mary Kirkwood. Most women never looked beyond the gratification of the crudest, easiest vanities and appetites. “Yes, you are right,” I continued. “You ought to marry—as soon as you can. The man isn’t important, except in the ways you spoke of. So far as man and woman love is concerned, that quickly passes—where it ever exists at all. But the bond of father, mother, and children is enduring—at least, I’m sureyouwould make it so.”
We sat lost in thought for some time—I reflecting moodily upon my own baffled and now seemingly hopeless longing, she probably busy with the ideas suggested in her next speech.
“The main trouble is money,” said she. “Except for that my husband would have been all right. When we first met he did not know my family had wealth. He thought I belonged to another and poor branch. And I think he cared for me, and would have been the man I sought but for the money. It roused a dormant side of his nature, and everything went to pieces.”
“Then, marry a rich man,” I suggested.
She shook her head. “I don’t know a single rich man—exceptpossiblymy brother—who isn’t obsessed about money. The rich have a craving to be richer that’sworse than the desire of the poor to be rich.... I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring up children in the atmosphere of wealth and caste and show—the sort of atmosphere a man or woman crazy about money insists on creating. My father was right. He was a really wise man. I owe to him every good instinct and good idea I have.”
“But you must have seen some man who promised well. I think you can trust to your judgment. You mustn’t defeat your one chance for happiness by overcaution.”
Again she was silent for several minutes. Then she said, with a queer laugh and an embarrassed movement: “I have seen such a man—lately. I like him. I think I could like him more than a little. I’ve an idea he might care for me if I’d let him. But—I don’t know.”
I saw that she longed to confide, but wished to be questioned. “Here on the yacht?” said I.
She nodded.
“Beechman?”
She laughed shyly yet with amusement.
“That was an easy guess,” said I. “He’s the only man of us free to marry.”
“What do you think of him?”
“The very man I’d say,” replied I. “He’s good to look at—clever, healthy, and honest. He isn’t money-mad. He could make quite a splurge with what he has, yet he doesn’t. He is a serious man—does not let them tempt him into fashionable society or any other kind.”
“What are the objections?” said she. “My fathertrained us to look for the rotten spots, as he called them. He said one ought to hunt them out and examine them carefully. Then if, in spite of them, the thing still looked good, why there was a chance of its being worth taking.”
“That’s precisely my way of proceeding in business,” said I. “It’s a pity it isn’t used in every part of life—from marketing up to choosing a friend or a husband.”
“Well, what are the ‘rotten spots’ in Mr. Beechman?”
“I haven’t looked for them,” said I. “No doubt they’re there, but as they’re not obvious they may be unimportant.”
“Can’t you think ofany?”
She was laughing, and so was I. Poor Beechman, down in the cabin absorbed in bridge, how amazed he’d have been if he could have heard! In my mind’s eye I was looking him over—a tall, fair man with good smooth-shaven features.
“He’s getting bald rather rapidly for a man of thirty or thereabouts,” said I.
“I don’t like baldness,” said she. “But I can endure it.”
“He is distinctly vain of his looks and his strength. But he has cause to be.”
“All men are physically vain,” said she. “And they can’t help it, because it is the hereditary quality of the male from fishes and reptiles up.”
“He’s inclined to be opinionated, and his point of view is narrow.”
“I think I might hope to educate him out of that,” said she. “I can be tactful.”
“It’s certainly not a serious objection.”
“Any other spots?”
“He has a certain—a certain—lack of vigor. It’s a thing I’ve observed in all professional men, except those of the first rank, those who are really men of action.”
She nodded. “I was waiting for that,” said she. “It’s the thing that has made me hesitate.” She laughed outright. “What a conceited speech! But I’m exposing myself fully to you.”
“Why not?” said I.
“I am picking him to pieces as if I thought myself perfection. As a matter of fact, I know he’d fly from me if he saw me as I am.” She reflected, laughed quietly. “But he never would know me as I am. An unconventional woman—if she’s sensible—only shows enough of her variation from the pattern to make herself interesting—never enough to be alarming.”
“You are unconventional?”
“You didn’t suspect it?”
“No. You smoke cigarettes—but that has ceased to be unconventional.”
“I rather thought you had a favorable opinion of my intelligence,” said she.
“So I have,” said I. “To be perfectly frank, you seemed to me to have as good a mind as your brother.”
“That is flattering,” said she, immensely pleased, and with reason. “Well, if you thought so favorablyof my intelligence, how could you believe me conventional?”
“I see,” said I. “No one who thinks can be conventional.”
“Conventionality,” said she, “was invented to save some people the trouble of thinking and to prevent others from being outrageous through trying to think when they’ve nothing to think with.”
“That is worth remembering and repeating,” laughed I. “Personally, I’m deeply grateful for conventionality. You see, I came up from the bottom, and I find it satisfactory to be able to refer to the rules in all the things I knew nothing about.”
“My brother says the most remarkable thing about you—and your wife— Do you mind my telling you?”
“Go on,” said I.
“He says most people who come up are alternately hopeless barbarians and hopelessly conventional, but that you took the right course. You learned to be conventional—learned the rules—before you ventured to try to make personal variations in them.”
“I’m slow to risk variations,” said I. “Most of the efforts in that direction are—eccentric. And I detest eccentricity as much as I like originality.”
“If Mr. Beechman were only a little less conventional!” sighed she. “I’m afraid he’d be rather—” She hesitated.
“Tiresome?” I ventured to suggest.
“Tiresome,” she assented. “But—there would be the children. Do you think he’d try to interfere with me there?”
“You’ll never know that until you’ve married him,” said I.
“It’s a pity he has an occupation that would keep him round the house most of the time,” said she. “That’s a trial to a woman. She’s always being interrupted when she wishes to be free.”
“You mustn’t expect too much,” said I. “I think the children will beyourchildren.”
She did not reply in words. But a sudden strengthening of her expression made me feel that I was getting a glimpse of her father.
We talked no more of Beechman or of any personalities related to this story. When the bridge party broke up and a supper was served on deck, she and Beechman sat together. And I gathered from the sounds coming from their direction that he was making progress. My spirits gradually oozed away and I sat glumly pretending to listen while Mrs. Raphael talked to me. Usually she interested me because she talked what she knew and knew things worth while. But that night I heard scarcely a word she said. When the party, one by one, began to go below, Mrs. Kirkwood joined me and found an opportunity to say, aside:
“Won’t you talk with Mr. Beechman—and tell me your honest opinion? You know I can’t afford to make another mistake. And I’m in earnest.”
I stood silent, smoking and staring out toward the dim Connecticut shore.
“It wouldn’t be unfair to him,” she urged. “You’re not especially his friend. I can’t ask anyone else, and I believe in your judgment.”
“If I advised you, I’d be taking a heavy responsibility,” said I.
“I’m not that kind—you know I’m not,” replied she. “I don’t ask advice, to have some one to blame if things go wrong. Of course, if there’s a reason why you can’t very well help me— Maybe you already know something against him?—something you’ve no right to tell?”
“Nothing,” said I, emphatically. “And I don’t believe there is anything against him.” Then, on an impulse of fairness and to wipe out the suspicion of Beechman I had unwittingly created, I said: “Really, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t size him up and give you my opinion. I’ll do my best.”
She thanked me with a fine lighting up of the eyes. And the warm friendly pressure of her hand lingered after she had long been below and was no doubt asleep.
What was my reason for hesitating? You have guessed it, but you think I do not intend to admit. You are deceived there. I admit frankly. I felt unable to advise her because I found that I was in love with her, myself. Yes, I was in love, and for the first time in my life. The latest time of falling in love is always the first. As we become older and more experienced, better acquainted with the world, with ourselves, with what we want and do not want—in a word, as wegrow, the meaning of love grows. And each time we love, we see, as we look back over the previous times, that what we thought was love was in fact simply educational.
So, when I say I had never loved until I loved Mary Kirkwood, I am speaking a truth which is worth thinking about. I had reached the age, the stage of physical and mental development, at which a man’s capacities are at their largest—at which I could give love and could appreciate love that was given to me. And I, who could not ask or hope love from her, gave her all the love I had to give. Gave because I could not help giving. Who, seeing the best, can help wanting it?
But for my promise to her I should have left the yacht early the following morning. As it was I stayed on, with my mind made up to keep my word. Did I stay because of my promise? Did I stay because I loved her? I do not know. Who can fathom the real motive in such a situation as that? I can only say that I sought Beechman’s society and did my best to take his measure. It had been so long my habit to judge men without regard to my personal feeling about them that, perhaps in spite of myself, I saw this man as he was, not as I should have liked him to be. I found that I had underestimated him. I had been prejudiced by his taking himself too seriously—a form of vanity which I happen particularly to detest. Also his sense of humor was different from mine—a fact that had misled me into thinking he had no sense of humor. I had thought—shall I say hoped?—that I would find him a man she could respect but could not love. I was forced to abandon this idea. So far as a man can judge another for a woman, he could succeed with almost any heart-free woman. I wondered that Mary Kirkwood should be uncertain about him. I might have drawncomfort from her having done so, had I not known how she dreaded making a second mistake.
That day and the next, when I was not with him, she was. I shan’t attempt to tell my emotions. That sort of thing seems absurd to all the world but the one who is suffering. Besides, the fact that I was a married man would alienate the sympathies of all respectable readers. Not that I am yearning for sympathy. Those who have read thus far may have possibly gathered that I am not one of those who live on sympathy and wither and die without it. The only sympathy human beings seem able to give one another, I have discovered, is a species of self-complacent pity; and while it may not be exactly a stone, it is certainly a most inferior quality of bread.
The third morning I sought her out. She made a picture of strong, slim young womanhood to cause the heart—at least, my heart—to ache, as she leaned against the rail in her blue-trimmed white linen dress showing her lovely throat. Said I, avoiding her eyes: “I’m off for the shore, and I wish to report before leaving.”
“Ashore!” she cried. “Why, you were to have gone on to Bar Harbor and back again.”
“Business—always business.”
“I’m disappointed,” said she, and I saw with a furtive glance that her face had quite lost its brightness.
“I’m glad of that, at least,” said I with a successful enough attempt at lightness; for, as I have never been the sort of man in whom women expect to find sentimentalism, signs of embarrassment or other agitationwould be attributed to any other source before the heart.
“I’ve lost interest in the trip,” she declared.
I forced a smile. “Beechman isn’t going.”
“Oh, that’s different,” said she, with a certain frank impatience. “You’re the one person I can really talk to.... Can’t you stay?”
I did not let my face betray me. I waited before speaking until I was sure of my voice. “Impossible,” I said, perhaps rather curtly—for, mind you, I wished to deal honestly with her, and was not trying to hint my love while pretending to hide it. I know there is a notion that love cannot be controlled. But the kind of love that can’t be controlled is a selfish, greedy appetite and not love at all. When the man doesn’t control his love the woman may be sure he is thinking of himself only, of her merely as a possible means of pleasure—is thinking of her as the hungry hunter thinks of the fine fat rabbit. Said I:
“Now for my report on Beechman.”
But she would not let me escape. “Why are you short with me?” she asked. “Have I offended you?”
“No, indeed,” said I. “You’ve been everything that’s kind and friendly.”
“The very idea of losing your friendship frightens me,” she went on. “I’ve a feeling for you—a feeling of—of intimacy”—she flushed rosily—“that I have for no one else in the world. Oh, I don’t expect you to return it. No doubt I seem insignificant to you. Almost anyone would want your friendship. You are sure you aren’t leaving because you are bored?”
“Absolutely sure. If I could explain my reason for going you would see that I must. But I can’t explain. So you’ll be glad to hear that I find Beechman even more of a man than I thought.”
She looked at me apologetically. “You’ll think me foolish, but since I’ve begun to try to like him better I’ve been—almost—not liking him.”
I am sure I beamed with delight. For, there are limits—very narrow ones—to unselfishness in the most considerate love. And I am not able to pose as more than feebly unselfish. “That isn’t fair to him,” I said, with more enthusiasm in my words than in my tone. “I’ve been judging him as carefully as I know how, and I must in honesty say he is a rare man. You’ll not find many like him.”
“Don’t tell me he’s worthy,” she cried, “or I shall loathe him.”
“And he cares for you,” I said.
“Did he tell you so?”
“I think he would have if I had encouraged him.... I liked the way he spoke of you, and”—I hesitated, could not hold back the words—“and I am not easy to please there.” Those words were certainly far from confession, were the mildest form of indiscretion. Still, so determined was I to be square, and so guilty did I feel, that they sounded like a contemptible attempt stealthily to make love to her.
“Thank you,” she said gently. And her suddenly swimming eyes and tender voice reminded me how alone she was and how bitter her experience had been and how she deserved happiness.
I felt ashamed of myself. “I hope you will be happy,” I said, perhaps rather huskily. “Anyone who tried to prevent it would deserve to be killed.”
She looked at me with such a steady, penetrating gaze that I feared I had betrayed myself. In fact, I knew I had. I glanced at my watch, put out my hand. “I hate to go,” I said, in the tone of one man to another. “But I must.” And as we shook hands, I repeated, “I know you will be happy.”
She laughed nervously; she, too, had become ill at ease. “You make me feel engaged,” she said with an attempt at mockery.
As the launch touched the shore I looked back. She was leaning on the rail, Beechman beside her. He was talking, but I felt sure she was not listening. As I looked she waved her hand. I lifted my hat and hurried away. And I learned the meaning of that word desolation.
Do not think, because I have not raved, talked of the moon and stars, poetized about my soul states, that therefore I did not love her. The banquet of life spread so richly for me seemed a ghastly mockery. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? I had lost my soul. I had discovered how I might have been happy, and at the same time I had discovered that it could never be—never. And always before me she stood in her radiant youth—intelligent, so capable, splendidly sincere—the woman I loved, the woman I felt I could have made love me.
There was my temptation—the feeling, the convictionthat I could win her love. She had confessed to a friendship for me different from any she had for anyone else in the world. If I were willing to take advantage of her trust, of her liking, of her longing for love and of my knowledge of it—if I were to let her see how utterly I loved her—I could surely win her. There were times when I said to myself: “You—even as you are—can make her happier than anyone else could. She would prefer what you can give her to what she will get from Beechman. Your love gives you the right to make her happy. You are letting foolish conventional notions blind you to what is really right. If you had acted in business in that fashion, you would not have got far. Yet in the supreme crisis of your life you let yourself be frightened off by a bogy of conventional morality.”
Perhaps I was giving myself sound advice there. I do not know. I only know that I put the temptation behind me and went to work. The sentimental readers will not forgive me. So be it. I am a plain man, rather old-fashioned—prim, I believe it is called—in my ideas, not at all the ladies’ man. And I did not want to harm her. I loved her.
I went to work. The sort of people who are ever on the lookout for some excuse for going to pieces, and the world is well sprinkled with them, eagerly seize on disappointment in love as precisely what they were seeking. At the risk of being thought cold and hard, I will say that it is extremely fortunate for Joan that she escaped the Darby who goes smash for disappointed love of her. If Joan had yielded to him, Darbywould simply have been put to the trouble of finding another pretext for throwing up his job and taking to drink. I confess it did not occur to me to give up and fall to boozing and brooding. I should not have dared do that; for, you see, I was really in love—not with myself, but with Mary Kirkwood. I went to work. I filled my days and my evenings with business engagements that compelled both my time and my thought. I took on an extra secretary. I started to build a railway. I laid out an addition to the manufacturing city I had founded. I organized a farm for teaching city slum boys to be farmers. I engaged in several entirely new mining and manufacturing enterprises. The result was that when I went to bed, I slept; and when they awakened me in the morning my brain was at work before my head was well off the pillow. And still— You can distract your mind from the aching tooth, but it aches on.
All this time I was receiving weekly letters from Edna and Margot—long and loving letters. I read them, and you may possibly imagine I was filled with shame and remorse. Not at all. My wife and my daughter had rather exaggerated my vanity. Only vanity could gull a husband and father in my position into fancying himself the object of such luxuriant affection as those letters professed. If you have lies to tell, take my advice and don’twritethem. I can’t explain the mystery, but a lie which, spoken and heard, passes out and passes in as smoothly as a greased shuttle in its greased groove, becomes a glaring falsehood when set down in black and white. The only effect ofthose letters upon me was to make my sick heart the sadder with the realization of what I had missed in losing Mary Kirkwood.
And I kept wondering what it was that Edna and Margot were slathering me for.
In September I got the key to the mystery. The necessity of floating some bonds took me abroad again. I found my family ensconced in beautiful luxury in an apartment in Paris. You drove out the Champs Elysées. Not far from the President’s palace you drove in at great doors—not gates, but doors—in a plain, unpretentious-looking house wall. You were in a superb garden of whose existence you had no hint from the street. Magnificent bronze inner doors—powdered and velveted lackeys—a majestic stairway leading to lofty and gorgeous corridors and salons. Really my wife, with the aid of those clever European professors of the aristocratic art, had educated herself amazingly. On every side there were evidences of her good taste in furniture, in tapestries, in wall coverings, in pictures. It was not the taste of a home maker, but it was unquestionably good taste. It was not the sort of taste I liked, but not to admire it would have been to lack the sense of harmony in line and color. And let me add in justice to her, it was her own taste. There is no mistaking the difference between the luxury that is merely bought and the luxury that is created.
I submitted with what grace I could muster to the exuberant hypocrisies of that greeting. But I got tobusiness with all speed. “In the note I found in London you said you had a surprise for me,” I said to Edna. “What is it?”
“How impatient you are,” laughed she. “Just like a child.”
Whether because the fashions of the day happened to be peculiarly becoming or because she had actually improved, she now had the loveliness more exquisite than I had ever seen in woman. No doubt her piquant face had charm for most people; for me it had none whatever. I knew too well what lay beneath—or, rather, what was not there, for like most human beings her defects of character were not so much the presence of the vices as the lack of the virtues.
“I’ve been waiting for that surprise several months,” said I. “Your letters and Margot’s showed that some shock was coming.”
“Shock? No, indeed!” And she and Margot laughed gayly. “It isn’t altogether a surprise,” she went on. “Can’t you guess?”
I looked at Margot. “Ah!” I said. “Margot is engaged.”
Margot ran across the room and kissed me. “Oh, I’m so happy, papa!” she cried.
“Is it the duke?” I asked.
She made a wry face. “He was horrid!” she said. “I couldn’tendurehim.”
“So you had to fall back on the marquis?”
Neither of the women liked this way of putting the matter. It suggested that I knew the painful truth of the failure of the ducal campaign. But they were notto be put out of humor. “You liked him yourself, papa,” said Margot.
I was abstractedly thinking how I had no sense of her being my daughter or of Edna being my wife. You would say that after all we three had been through together, from Passaic up, it would be a sheer impossibility for there ever to be a sense of strangeness between us. But there is no limit to the power of the human soul to cut itself off; intimacy is hard to maintain, isolation—alas—is the natural state. I looked on them as strangers; I could feel that, in spite of their clever, resolute forcing, in spite of the hypocrisy of love for me which each doubtless maintained at all times with the other, still they could scarcely hide their feeling that I was a strange man come in from the street.
“Yes, I liked Crossley,” said I. “I think he’ll make you a good husband.”
“He ismadabout her!” said Edna. “There was a while this summer when he thought he had lost her, and he all but went out of his mind.”
To look at her was to believe it; for, a lovelier girl was never displayed in all her physical perfection by a more discriminating mother.
“When is the wedding to be?” said I.
There was a brief, surcharged silence—no more than a pause. Then Edna said indifferently, “As soon as the settlements are arranged.”
“Oh—is he settling something on her?” said I, with pretended innocence. “I’m glad of that. There’s been too much of the other sort of thing.”
Margot came to the rescue with a charming laugh. “Poor Hugh!” she said. “He hasn’t anything but mortgages.”
“Um—I see,” said I glumly—and I observed intense anxiety behind the smiles in those two pairs of beautiful eyes. “How much have we got to pay for him?”
Edna looked reproachfully at me. “Margot,” said she, “you’d better go tell them to serve lunch in fifteen minutes.”
“Nonsense,” said I cheerfully. “Let her stay. What’s the use of this hypocrisy? She knows he cares no more about her than she cares about him—that it’s simply a matter of buying and selling. If she doesn’t know it, if she’s letting her vanity bamboozle her——”
“Godfrey—please!” implored Edna. “Don’t smirch the child’s romance. She and Hugh love each other. If she were poor, he’d marry her just the same.”
“Has he offered to go ahead, regardless of settlements?” I asked.
“Of course not, papa,” flashed Margot. “Things aren’t done that way over here.”
“Oh, yes, they are,” replied I. “Romantic love matches occur every day. Even royalty throws up its rights, to marry a chorus girl. But when there’s a fat American goose to pluck and eat, why, they pluck and eat it. I’m the goose, my dear—not you.”
“You don’t understand,” murmured Margot.
“I wish I didn’t,” said I. “And I wish you didn’t have to understand. If possible I want to arrangematters with him so that he’ll always treat you decently.”
“But, Godfrey,” cried Edna in a panic, “you can’t talk money tohim.”
“Why not?” said I. “He’sthinkingmoney. Why shouldn’t he talk it?”
“He knows nothing about those things, papa——”
I laughed.
“You’ll ruin everything!” cried my wife. “You’ll make us the laughingstock of Europe!”
“We Americans of the rich class are that already,” replied I.
Edna must have given her daughter some secret signal, for she abruptly and hastily left the room, closing the door behind her. I shrugged my shoulders, settled back on the exquisitely upholstered and carved sofa on which I had seated myself. Looking round I said, “This is a beautiful room. You’ve certainly arranged a fitting background for yourself and Margot.”
But she was not listening. She was watching her fingers slowly twist and untwist the delicate little lace handkerchief. At last she said: “Godfrey, I’ve never asked a favor of you. I’ve given my whole life to advancing your interests—to making our child a perfect lady—and to placing her in a dazzling position.”
“Yes,” said I. “You have worked hard—and you’ve made your tricks.”
“I’ve played my hand well—as you have yours,” said she, accepting my rather unrefined figure with good grace. “I began to make Margot’s career before she was born. The first time I saw her little face, Imurmured to myself, ‘Little Duchess.’ Now, you understand why I brought her up so carefully.”
“Oh,” said I, looking at her with new interest. “That was it?” I who knew what a futile, purposeless, easily discouraged breed the human race is could not but admire this woman. If her intelligence had only been equal to her will, what might she not have accomplished!
“I have never lost sight of it for a moment,” said she. “In the early days—for a time—when we were seemingly so hopelessly obscure, and I was too ignorant to learn which way to turn—for a while I was discouraged. But I never gave up—never! And step by step I’ve trained her for the grand position as a leader of European society she was one day to occupy—for, I knew that if she led Europe she would be leader at home, too. Over there they’re merely a feeble, crude echo of Europe.”
“Socially,” said I.
“That’s all we’re talking about,” replied she. “That’s all there is worth talking about. What else have you been piling up money for?... What else?”
I could think of no reply. I was silent. What else, indeed?
“I kept her away from other children,” Edna went on. “After she could talk I never trusted her to nurses until we could afford fashionable servants. I got her the right sort of governesses—so that she should speak French, Italian, and German, and should have a well-bred English accent for her own language. I even trained her in the children’s stories she read—had herread only the fairy tales and the other stories that would fill her mind with ideas of nobility and titles and the high things of life.”
“The high things of life,” said I.
She made an impressive gesture—she looked like a beautiful young empress. “Let’s not cant,” said she. “Thosearethe high things of life. Ask any person you meet in America—young or old, high or low—ask him which he’d rather be—a prince, duke, marquis, or a saint, scientist, statesman. What would he answer?”
I laughed. “That he’d rather be a millionaire,” said I.
“A millionaire with a title—with established social position at the very top—that couldn’t be taken away. That’s the truth, Godfrey.”
“I’ll not contradict you,” said I.
“And,” she went on, “I’ve brought up our daughter so that she could realize the highest ambition within our reach. Haven’t I brought her up well?”
“Perfectly, for the purpose,” said I.
“When we came over here, I examined the ground carefully. I was at first inclined to one of the big Continental titles. They are much older, much more high sounding than the English titles—and so far as birth goes they mean something, while the English titles mean really nothing at all. The English aristocracy isn’t an aristocracy of birth.”
“That’s, no doubt, the reason why it still has some say in affairs,” said I.
“Its talk about birth is almost entirely sham,” proceededshe, not interested in my irrelevant comment. “But I found that it was the most substantial aristocracy, the only one that was respected everywhere, just as the English money circulates everywhere. And it’s the only one that makes much of an impression at home. We are so ignorant that we think England is all that it pretends to be—the powerful part of Europe. Of course, it isn’t, but—no matter. I decided for an English title.”
“And Margot?”
“I have brought her up to respect my judgment,” said Edna.
“I wonder what will become of her,” said I, reflectively, “when she hasn’t you at her elbow to tell her what to do.... But why a marquis? Why not a duke?”
She smiled, blushed a little. “The only duke we could have got—and he was a nice young fellow—but he was in love with an English girl of wealth—and he wanted too much to change to an American. Is that frank enough to suit you?”
“If you’d only keep to that key,” said I.
“He wanted double the American dowry that he was willing to take with an English girl.”
“His being in love with another girl might have made it unpleasant for Margot,” I suggested.
“That wouldn’t have amounted to anything,” replied she. “Over here the right sort of people bring up their children as I brought up Margot—to give their hearts where their hands should go. They are not shallow and selfish. They think of the family dignityand honor before they think of their personal feelings.”
“That’s interesting—and new—at least to me,” said I.
“You have been judging these things without knowing, Godfrey,” said she. “You have attacked me for narrowness, when in fact you were the narrow one.”
“Yes? What next?” said I.
“I found that the Massingfords—that’s the family name of the Marquis of Crossley—I found they ranked higher as a family than any of the ducal families except one. Of course I don’t include the royal dukes.”
“Of course not,” said I gravely.
“I might possibly have got one of the royal dukes—if not in England, then here on the Continent. But I decided— You see, Godfrey, I looked into everything.”
“You certainly have been thorough,” said I. “I should have said it was impossible in so short a time.”
“But it wasn’t difficult. All the Americans over here are well informed about these things.”
“I can readily believe it,” said I. “But why did you turn down the poor royal dukes?”
“Because the other women would have made it dreadfully uncomfortable for Margot. They’d have hated her for taking precedence over them by such a long distance. Then, too—the dowry. I was afraid you couldn’t afford the dowry—or wouldn’t think the title worth the money. Indeed, I didn’t think so, myself.”
“A royal duke comes high?”
“The least dowry would be seventy-five million francs.”
“Fifteen million dollars!” I exclaimed. “Whew!”
“Mrs. Sinkers tried to get one for her daughter for ten millions—all she could scrape together. They agreed to a morganatic marriage for that, but not a full marriage. So, she and poor Martha gave it up. Martha’s heart is broken. The duke made love to her so wonderfully. I can’t imagine what Mrs. Sinkers was about, to allow such a thing before the affair was settled. Poor Martha was so excited that she would have accepted the morganatic marriage—she ranking merely as the duke’s head mistress. But while he was willing to take other mistresses for nothing, and even to pay them, he wouldn’t takeherfor less than fifty million francs.”
“Poor Martha!” said I.
“I was too wise to trifle with royal dukes,” pursued Edna, so interested in her own narrative and so eager to show how sagacious she had been that she forgot her pose and her doubts as to my sympathies. “I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of about a dozen eligible men. Only three stood the test, and it finally narrowed down to Crossley. Margot was so happy when I told her. She wanted to love him—and now she is loving him.”
A long pause while Edna calmed down to earth from her European soarings, and while I, too, returned to the normal from an excursion in the opposite direction. “How much does he want?” said I. “Let’s get to bed rock.”
“He loves her so that he is willing, so I hear— Of course, nothing has been said— You will not believe how refined and——”
“How much?” interrupted I.
Edna winced at my rudeness, then again presented an unruffled front of happy loving serenity. “Enough to pay off the mortgages and to provide them with a suitable income.”
“How much?” I persisted, laughing.
She looked tenderly remonstrant. “I don’t know, Godfrey——”
“You knowabouthow much. What’s the figure—the price of this marked down marquis?”
“I should say the whole thing would not cost more than three or four million dollars.”
“Three—or four.” I laughed aloud. “Not much difference there. Now which is it—three or four?”
“Perhaps nearer four. Margot must have agoodincome.”
“To be sure,” said I.
“The whole object would be defeated if she hadn’t the means——”
“The money,” I suggested. “Why use these evasive words? We’re talking a plain subject. Let’s use its language.”
“The money, then,” acquiesced she, resolutely good-humored. “If she hadn’t the money to make a proper appearance.”
“Naturally, to lead in society you must lead in spending money.... Well—it can’t be done.”
She paled, half started from her chair, sank backagain. There was a long silence. Then she said, “You have never been cruel, Godfrey. You won’t be cruel now. You won’t destroy my life work. You won’t shatter Margot’s happiness.”
“The whole thing is—is nauseating to me,” said I.
Her short, pretty upper lip quivered. Her eyes filled. “If you didn’t approve, dear, why didn’t you stop me long ago? Why did you let me go on until there was no turning back?”
I was silent. There seemed to be no answer to that.
“Did you do it purposely, Godfrey?” said she, with melancholy eyes upon me. “Did you lure us on, so that you could crush us at one stroke?”
I was silent.
“I can’t believe that of you. I won’t believe it until you compel me to.”
“As I understand it,” said I, “you propose that I hand over to this young man four million——”
“Only about half of it, Godfrey,” cried she, reviving. “The other half would be Margot’s—for her own income.”
“Then that I hand over to this amiable, insignificant young foreigner two million dollars to induce him to consent to the degradation of marrying my daughter—to have him going about, saying in effect, ‘It is true, she is only one of those low Americans, but don’t forget that I got two million dollars for stooping.’ Is that the proposition?”
“You know it isn’t!” cried she. “He doesn’t feel that he is degrading himself. He feels proud of winning her—the most beautiful, the best mannered girl in London.But it’d be simply impossible for them to marry without the money.Ishouldn’t want it. They would be wretched. You talk like a sentimental schoolboy, Godfrey. How could two refined, sensitive people such as Hugh and Margot, used to every luxury, used to being foremost in society—how could they be happy without the means——”
“The money,” I corrected blandly.
“Without the money needed to maintain their position as marquis and marchioness of Crossley?”
I nodded assent.
“He has only about five thousand—twenty-five thousand of our money—a year. That is ridiculous for a marquis. He has to keep all his houses closed and run as economically as possible. Even then they cost him nearly seventy-five thousand dollars a year to maintain.”
“And he has only twenty-five thousand!”
“I meant twenty-five thousand over and above. He has that to live on. And, poor fellow, he is dropping every year deeper and deeper into debt. So much is expected of a marquis.”
“But not honesty, apparently,” said I.
“You mustn’t judge these people by our commercial standards,” she gently rebuked.
“I forgot,” said I penitently.
“And the poor fellow does love Margot so!”
“Um,” said I. “Have you ever happened to hear of a Miss Townley—Jupey Townley?”
A flash of annoyance flitted over Edna’s lovely, delicate countenance.
“I see you have,” said I. “You were, indeed, thorough. Permit me to compliment you, my dear.”
“I am glad Hugh hasn’t been a saint.”
“Isn’t,” said I.
“That’s all in the past,” declared she.
“I saw them in a box at a London music hall night before last,” said I. “They were— They had been drinking.”
But Edna was not daunted. “You are a man of the world, Godfrey. Don’t pretend to be narrow.”
“When a man loves a woman——”
“Love is very different from that sort of thing, and you know it.”
“Has Margot heard——”
“Godfrey!” cried Edna, in horror. “Do you think I would permitmydaughter—ourdaughter—to know such things! Why, her mind is as pure——”
I could not restrain a gesture of disgust. “You women!” I cried, rising. “Pure! Pure—God in Heaven, pure!”
Her look of dazed astonishment, obviously sincere, helped me to get back my composure. I sat down again. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Even if you men have no purity yourselves, you ought to believe in it in women,” said she, with an injured air.
“Yes, indeed,” I agreed heartily. “I congratulate you on being able to make such generous allowances for masculine frailty.”
“You are sarcastic,” said she coldly.
“No matter. It certainly does not damage the title—perhaps adds to its luster.”
“It’s hereditary in their family to be wild up to marriage, and then to settle down and serve the state in some distinguished position.”
“Oh—in that case—” said I ironically.
“Margot and her husband and her children will have your money some day,” pursued she. “Why not give it to her now, when it will get her happiness?”
That impressed me. “I have not said I would not consent to this marriage,” I reminded her. “As a matter of fact, I’m in favor of it. I can see no future for Margot in America——”
“No, indeed,” cried Edna eagerly. “She simply couldn’t marry over there. She’d be wretched.”
“But I feel it is my duty— Rather late in the day for me to talk about duty toward my daughter, after neglecting it all these years. Still, I ought to see to it that she has the best possible chance for a smooth married life. It’s only common prudence to take all precautions—isn’t it?”
“Allsensibleprecautions,” said she.
“You know how many of these foreign ‘alliances,’ as they’re called, have turned out badly.”
“They get a good many divorces in the states,” she suggested smilingly. “One to every twelve marriages, I read the other day.”
I admitted that she had made an effective retort. “The truth is,” said I, “American women aren’t brought up for domestic life. So, whether they marry at home or abroad they have trouble.”
“Men resent their independence,” said Edna.
“It may be so,” said I. Of what use to point out to her that the trouble lay in the women’s demanding to be supported and refusing to do anything to earn their support? All I said was: “I suspect a good many husbands think the marriage contract too one-sided—binding only them and not their wives. But the trouble with the ‘alliances’ can’t be that.”
“It’s because Europeans look on the wife as a kind of head servant. But Hugh isn’t that sort.”
“We’ll know more as to that when we hear what Margot says after she’s been married a few years,” said I. “The point to settle now is how to bind him to good behavior so far as it can be done in advance. He may be deeply in love with Margot. He may stay in love with her. But in the circumstances it’s wise to assume that he wants only her money and that, if he gets it, he’ll treat her badly.”
My wife’s silence was encouraging.
“If he had plenty of money he might even goad her into releasing him—and might marry again.”
My wife was obviously impressed. “Yes—that has been done,” said she. “Of course, if Margot should have an heir right away. But——”
She looked at me as if trying to decide whether she could trust me with a confidence. She evidently decided in my favor, for she went on to say:
“On the other hand—Margot is a peculiar girl. No—many women have the same peculiarity. They can’t be trusted with power over their husbands. If she had all the money in her own name and he weredependent on her— Godfrey, I’m sure there’d be trouble.”
Once more she was astonishing me with her clear judgment in matters as to which I should have thought her hopelessly prejudiced. “ButIcan be trusted,” said I. “The plan I had in mind was to take over the mortgages and guarantee a sufficient income.”
She shook her head. “He won’t consent,” said she. “His solicitors will insist on better terms than that.”
“Now you see why I want to talk to him directly. I don’t purpose to be hampered by that old trick of the principal hidden behind a go-between.”
“There’s no other way,” said Edna. “They’re too clever to yield that.”
“He needs money badly.”
“But he won’t marry unless he’s actually to get it,” replied she. “Almost every American who has married a daughter over here has tried to make a business bargain—at least, a bargain not altogether one-sided. Not one of them has succeeded. These Europeans have been handling the dowry and settlement question too many centuries.”
“I see,” said I affably. “If we want what they’ve got, we have to take it on their terms.”
It was most satisfactory, talking with her now that she consented to speak and listen to good sense. I was at once in a more amiable frame of mind, although I knew she had descended from her high horse only because she was shrewd enough to see it was the one way to get me to do as she wished.
“I will hide behind a go-between myself,” said I.
“Any English lawyer would simply play into the hands of the other side. At least, so Hilda was telling me.”
“Is she happy?”
“Very.”
“When’s her husband coming back?”
“Not for a year or so, I believe. Lord Blankenship cares more for big game and for exploring than for anything else.”
“An ideal marriage,” said I. “She brought him the money he wanted. He brought her the title she wanted. And they don’t annoy each other. He devotes himself to sport, she to society. These aristocratic people, with their simple, vulgar wants that are so easily gratified—how they are to be envied!”
Edna was observing me furtively, uneasily. I pretended not to notice. I went on: “Now, if they wanted the difficult things—things like love and companionship and congeniality—they might be wretched. When a child cries for a stick of candy or a tinsel-covered rattle—for money or social position—why, it’s easily pacified. But if it cries for the moon and the stars—” I laughed softly, enjoying her wonder as much as my own fancies.