“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 conviction that 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, Darby
would 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’t _write_ them. 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 of
those 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 to business 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?”