My cable to Norman was answered the next day but one by a note from
him, stopping in the same hotel. I shall not detail the negotiations
that followed--the long and stormy scenes between him and Dawkins,
solicitor to the Marquis of Crossley. It is sufficient to say that
Norman had the novel sensation of being beaten on every point. Not
outwitted, for he had wit enough and to spare for any contest of
cunning; but beaten by the centuries-old precedents and customs and
requirements in matters of dower and settlement. The mercenary marriage
is an ancient habit of the human race; in fact, the scientists have
proved that it began with marriage itself, that there was no marriage
in the civilized sense until there was property to marry for. Perhaps
the mercenary marriage is not so recent in America as our idyllists
declare. Do we not read that the father of his country married solely
for money an almost feeble-minded woman whom everybody knew he did
not love? And, inasmuch as marriage is first of all a business--the
business of providing for the material needs and wants of two and
their children--may it not barely be possible that the unqualifiedly
sentimental view of marriage can be--perhaps has been--overdone? In
America, where the marriage for sentiment prevails to an extent unknown
anywhere else in the world--is not the institution of marriage there
in its most uneasy state? And may not that be the reason?
What a world of twaddle it is! If men and women could only learn to
build their ideals on the firm foundation--the only firm foundation--of
the practical instead of upon the quicksand of lies and pretenses,
wouldn’t the tower climb less shakily, if more slowly, toward the stars?
You may be sure there was nothing of the stars in those talks between
Norman and Dawkins--or in my talks with Norman--or in Crossley’s talks
with Dawkins. Crossley had had me looked up--had discovered as much
about my finances as it is possible to discover about the private
business of an American. He had got the usual exaggerated estimate of
my wealth, and he was resolved that he would not be cheated of a single
dollar he might wring from me. From my standpoint it was obvious that
he and Margot must have plenty of money or they could not be happy.
All I desired was to prevent him from feeling financially free--and
therefore under the aristocratic code, morally free--to show and to
act, after marriage, the contempt I knew he felt for all things and
persons American--except the dollars, which could be exchanged into
sovereigns. I fought hard, but he stood fast. Either Margot must lose
him or I must give him about what he asked--a fortune in his own right
for him. If I choose I could dower her; but as to dowering him he would
not permit the question of alternative to be raised.
“All right,” said I at last to Norman. “Give them their minimum.”
He was astounded, was furious--and as he is not the ordinary
lick-spittle lawyer but a man of arrogant independence, he did not
hesitate to let me see that his anger--and scorn--were for myself. “Do
you mean that?” he said.
“Yes,” replied I carelessly--as if I were now indifferent about the
whole business. “My girl wants his title. And why let a question of
money come between her and happiness?”
“I can’t refrain from saying, Loring, that I’d not have believed this
of you.”
“She’s not fit to live in America,” said I. “Her mother hasn’t educated
her for it. American mothers don’t educate their daughters nowadays to
be wives of American men. Honestly, do you know an American man able to
do for himself who would be foolish enough to marry that sort of girl?”
His silence was assent.
“You see. I’ve got to buy her a husband--that is, a title--over here.
This offering seems as good as there is in the market--at the price.
So--why not?”
“That’s one view of it,” said he coldly.
I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Come now--be sensible,” said I. “What
else can I do?”
“It would be an impertinence for me to say,” replied he.
“I can guess,” said I. “You needn’t trouble yourself to say it. You
evidently don’t know the circumstances. And I may add that so long as
I’ve got to buy Margot a title I might as well buy her a good one.”
He eyed me sharply. But I did not take him into my confidence--nor
shall I confide in you at present, gentle reader. I did not even let
him see that I was holding back anything. I went on with good-humored
raillery:
“I’m doing better than Hanley or Vanderveld or Pattison or any of the
others who’ve dealt in these markets. For a marquis Crossley is selling
cheap. He’s far from penniless, you know. It’s simply that he wants
more money. Why, really, old man, it’s what’s called a love match. They
always call it a love match when the nobleman isn’t absolutely on his
uppers.”
“You are certainly a philosopher, Loring,” said Norman, anxious, I saw,
to finish and drop the affair.
“And I became one in the usual way--necessity,” said I. “I’m as eager
to have this thing dispatched as you are. I want to get out to sea,
where perhaps the stench of aristocracy will blow out of my nostrils,
and stay out of them till I reach the other shore. Then I’ll get it
again. It blows down the bay to meet the incoming ships.”
“Yes, we’re pretty bad,” admitted Norman. “Not so bad as we used to
be, but pretty bad.” He laughed. “They accuse us of loving money. Why,
we are mere beginners at it. We haven’t learned how to idle or how to
spend money except in crude, tiresome ways. And to love money deeply
you must know how to idle and how to spend. Money’s _the_ passion with
these people. How they do need it!”
Neither shall I linger over the details of the engagement and the
wedding. For all that was important about either I refer you to
the newspapers of London and New York. They gave everything that
makes a snob’s eyes glisten and a snob’s mouth water. My wife has
somewhere--she knows exactly where--a scrapbook, and my daughter has
another of the same kind. Those scrapbooks are strongly bound and the
pages are of the heaviest time- and wear-resisting paper. In them are
pasted columns on columns of lists of titles, of descriptions of jewels
and dresses, of enumerations of wedding gifts. Margot received things
costing small fortunes from people she barely knew well enough to
invite. They gave in the hope--the good hope--of gaining the valuable
favor of the Marchioness of Crossley, a great lady by reason of her
title, a greater lady by reason of the ancientness of the Massingford
family, and at the top and summit of greatness by reason of her wealth.
That last item, by the way, was vastly overestimated. Everyone assumed
that Crossley had sold much more dearly. No one but those intimately
concerned dreamed what a bargain I had got.
You may be picturing a sordid affair, redolent of the stenches of
commercialism. If you are, gentle reader, you are showing yourself
unworthy of your own soulfulness, unworthy of the elegant society
into which I have introduced you. I have been giving simply the plain
facts--a mere skeleton upon which you, versed in society columns
and society novels, and skilled in the art of hiding ugly truths
under pretty lies, may readily drape the flesh and the garments of
sentimentality and snobbishness. You will then have the truth as it
appeared to the world--a handsome, manly groom, every inch of him
the patrician; a wondrous lovely, innocent, pure young bride, looking
the worthy mate of the great noble she had won with her beauty and
her sweetness; a background of magnificent houses and equipages,
of grand society people, of lackeys in livery without number; an
atmosphere of luxury, refinement, perfumed with the fairest flowers
and the most delicate artificial scents. You are seeing also the high
and noble motives of all concerned--the joy of parents in a daughter
sentimentally wooed and won to happiness; the generous and kindly
feelings of all the friends; the lavish and affectionate overflowing of
costly gifts; above all, the ecstatic young couple wrapped up in their
love for each other. Flesh up and beautify the skeleton to your taste,
gentle reader. You will not go amiss.
I must linger a moment on the happiness of my daughter. It was too
spiritual to be of this earth. As soon as the miserable, unimportant
money matters were settled, and her mother gave her full leave to love,
she threw herself into it with all the ardor of the heroine of a novel.
She had two diamond hearts made--at the most fashionable jewelers in
Paris, you may be sure. Upon the inside of the one she kept she had
engraved, under his picture, “From Hugh to Margot.” In the one she gave
him there surrounded her picture in diamond inlay, “To Hugh from his
dear love Margot.”
Each was to wear the heart round the neck until death. Again and again
I caught her dreaming over hers, sometimes with tears in her limpid
eyes. Again and again I caught her scribbling, “Margot, Marchioness
of Crossley, Viscountess Brear, Countess of Felday and Noth, Baroness
de Selve,” and so on through a list of titles which gentle reader will
find in “Burke’s” and the “Almanach de Gotha.”
And she had a reverent way of looking at him and a tender way of
touching him. Her mother, you will believe, spared neither expense nor
pains in getting together the trousseau. But Margot was not satisfied.
“Not nearly fine enough for _his_ bride,” she would say. “I’m _so_
afraid he’ll be disappointed.” Then the tears would spring. “Oh, mamma!
If he should be disappointed in me!”
“Not so bad as if you were to be disappointed in him,” I put in with no
other motive than to cheer her up.
But it only shocked her. “In Hugh!” she exclaimed, meaning in Cecil
Robert Grunleigh Percival Hugh Massingford, Marquis of Crossley, etc.
“_I_ disappointed in _him_! Oh, papa! You don’t _realize_!”
“No, I suppose not,” said I, getting myself away as speedily as my legs
would carry me.
Through these joyous scenes of youth and love and luxury I moved
gloomily--restless, bitter, tormented by self-reproaches and by
thoughts of the woman I loved. What Edna had said about her, though
I knew it was by way of precautionary cattishness, put into my mind
the inevitable suspicion--no, not actual suspicion, but germ of
suspicion--the almost harmless germ from which the most poisonous
suspicions may develop. I went round and round my mental image of Mary
Kirkwood. I viewed it from all angles. But I could not find a trace of
the flaw Edna had asserted. I analyzed her with all the analytical
skill I possessed, and that, I flatter myself, is not a little. No one
who has not the faculty of analysis ever gets anywhere; no one who has
that faculty ever escapes the charge of cynicism. Shallow people--the
sort that make such a charge--will regard it as proof of my utter
cynicism, my absolute lack of sentiment, that I was able to analyze the
woman I loved, or pretended I loved. But I assure you, gentle reader,
that not even love and passion suspend the habitual processes of a
good mind. The reason you have read the contrary so often is because
precious few writers about men of the superior sort have the capacity
to comprehend the intellects they try to picture. To the man of large
affairs, the average--and many a one above the average--biography or
novel about a great man reads like the attempt of a straddle bug to
give his fellow straddle bugs an account of an elephant.
I was the only inharmonious figure in that round of festivals. But no
one observed me. I simply got the reputation of being a man of reserve,
a thinker rather than a talker--as if there ever lived a thinker
who did not overflow with torrents of talk like a spring fed from a
glacier; but, of course, the spring flows only when The conditions
are favorable, not when it is ice-bound. I was not even interested in
observing. There is a monotony about the actions of fashionable people
that soon reduces a spectator of agile mind to stupor. The same thing
over and over again, with variations so slight that only a nit-wit
would be interested in them-- Could there be a worse indictment of
the intelligence of the human race than that so large a part of its
presumably most intelligent classes engage in the social farce, which
is an example of aimless activity about on a level with a dog’s chasing
its own tail?