“Have _you_ heard anything of it?” pursued I.
“Oh, in the case of a woman like her,” replied he, “there’s always
gossip about this man and that.”
“She ought to marry.”
“She _will_ marry.”
I forced a smile, and, as we knew each other so well, I ventured: “You
speak as one having authority.”
“Don’t _you_ know she will?” parried he.
“That sounds like evasion,” laughed I.
“Not at all. She cannot escape. Some man will convince her--surely.”
“But so far as you know, no man has?”
His eyes were frankly mocking. “I did not say that,” said he.
And I could get no further.
* * * * *
Before I returned to New York in the autumn I had added a lot of far
western enterprises to my already long list of occupations. Everything
I touched seemed to succeed. Even my new secretary, Rossiter, proved
better than Markham. Markham had an indifferent memory and a fondness
for women that was trying. Rossiter forgot nothing and was as shy of
the women, including the ladies, as was Lord Blankenship, who yawned
and retreated at the very sight of a skirt. The news from England was
altogether satisfactory. An heir was hoped for, and Crossley had become
a devoted husband and was about to enter politics. This struck me as a
huge joke, the more so because I knew that in England Crossley would
be welcomed as a source of real strength to his party. It seemed to me
amazing how England could stagger along when she was being managed by
such men and was grateful for it. But when I spoke to Blankenship about
it, he set me to thinking from a different standpoint.
“My son-in-law is going into politics,” said I. “In America he couldn’t
be elected dog-catcher.”
“Oh, I fancy money will do most anything most anywhere,” said he.
The news from Paris was equally good. Edna had settled there after a
joyous summer going from country house to country house in Britain,
and from château to château in France. She had seen one château which
she wished me to buy, and she begged me to come over and inspect it.
She did not explicitly say so, but I read between the lines that she
was greatly strengthening her social position by giving out that she
purposed buying a big place. You may imagine how much enthusiasm for
her such an announcement would create among noble down-at-the-heel
families eager to exchange unsalable old rook-roosts for American
dollars. I could hear her talking--how subtly she would put forth the
suggestion, how diplomatically she would discuss each worthless stone
heap in turn--and how she would rake in the invitations so difficult to
get unless one happens to know how, and so easy when one does know.
But with my arrival in New York I had a reverse. A cable came from Edna
saying that she was sailing at once and wished to see me.
I could not imagine what she wanted, and I did not waste much time in
making guesses. One evening, when Armitage and I were dining together
in the Federal Club--Blankenship had sailed for home--the idea flashed
into my mind that perhaps Edna wanted a divorce. Immediately I felt
that I had hit upon the precise reason for her coming. You will have no
difficulty in imagining what was the next idea in my train of thought.
If she divorced me I should be free to marry whom I pleased!
It was stupid of me, but in all my revolvings of my hopeless love for
Mary Kirkwood never once had I thought of divorcing my wife. I cannot
account for this lapse, except as an instance of the universal human
failing for overlooking the obvious. There was no religious scruple
in my early training to make me shy of divorce. On the contrary,
my parents, like most old-fashioned Americans of faiths other than
Episcopal and Catholic--and Episcopalians and Catholics were few in
the old American stock, except in New York and Baltimore and South
Carolina--most old-fashioned Americans believed that living together in
wedlock without love was sin, that divorce was no mere necessary evil,
but a religious rite as sacred as marriage itself. A house, they held,
is either a House of Hate or a House of Love, and no one should remain
in a House of Hate, and no child should be brought up there.
No doubt, if Edna and I had been living under the same roof the
idea of divorce would have taken form, actively definite form, long
before. But we had no home to be a House of Hate. We did not hate
each other; we bored each other. And as we were not poor, we lived
far enough apart not to annoy each other in the least. I cheerfully
paid any ransom she exacted for leaving me free--and you may be sure
she was not inexpensive. She had her own fortune--and it gave her
quite an income--but she husbanded that. She insisted upon state and
equipage, not to mention such small matters as stockings at fifty
dollars a pair and chemises at three hundred dollars apiece--for,
she knew how lovely she was and demanded for her beautiful body the
most beautiful garments that could be devised by French ingenuity at
combining cost and simplicity. I was--by instinct rather than by avowed
principles--thoroughly old-fashioned in my family ideas. Indeed, I
still am; and I say this with no apology. It may be that woman will
some day develop another and higher sphere for herself. But first she
would do well--in my humbly heretical opinion--to learn to fill the
sphere she now rattles round in like one dry pea in a ten-gallon can. I
want to see a few more women up to the modern requirements for wife and
mother. I want to see a few more women making a living without using
their sex charms--a few less ’tending the typewriter with one eye
while the other and busier is on the lookout for a husband. I believe
in emancipation of women--in votes for women--in all that sort of
thing. The one and only way to learn to swim is in the water. I am sick
and tired of woman the irresponsible, woman the cozener and milker of
man, woman the dead weight upon man, and drawing the pay of a housewife
and shirking all a housewife’s duties. So, you see, I am the friend of
woman--not of woman’s vanity and laziness and passion for parasiteism,
but of woman’s education and self-respect and independence.
I was thoroughly old-fashioned. My notion of wife was the independent,
self-respecting equal of her husband. That is, I had the typical
American husband’s ideal--the ideal that dates from the pioneer days
of no property and of labor for all, the ideal the American man still
lives up to, the one that enables woman to betray him. And, having this
ideal, I never permitted myself--no, not even when I spoke to her the
contrary in words--I never permitted myself to _feel_ that my wife was
not in the main what she should be.
If you have borne me company thus far, gentle reader, turn away
now. For, dreadful things are coming. I said to Armitage: “Your
sister--she’s still in the country?”
“No, she’s abroad,” replied he. “She’s visiting friends in Budapest.
Later on she’s to yacht in the East Mediterranean--she and the Horace
Armstrongs and Beechman--and--” He gave several names I do not now
recall.
“Is she engaged to Beechman?” I asked carelessly, but the question was
not one that could sound other than raw.
He smiled--an expression I did not like. At first I thought it a rebuke
to my impertinence. Afterwards I saw no such notion was in his mind.
“Beechman? Good Lord, no.”
“You are _sure_?”
“Absolute. He’d not dare go in that direction with _her_.”
“Why not?” said I.
“Oh--well--you see-- She doesn’t care for him,” replied Armitage
lamely. I was not liking him so well, now that I knew the world--his
world--better and could judge its beliefs and its hypocrisies more
accurately.
“He’s an unusual man,” said I. “She might easily care for him.”
“Well, she doesn’t,” retorted he irritably. “I happen to know she
doesn’t.”
I was convinced. Armitage’s tone said in effect that he had heard the
rumor, had questioned her, had been assured that there was no basis for
it.
So, she was abroad--five or six days away. I could not go to her and
make a beginning. Would I have gone if she had been within reach? I do
not know. I rather think not. As I have said, I was old-fashioned; and
the sort of love I felt for her, and my sense of what she had suffered
at the hands of the first man she had trusted would have made me wait,
I hope, until I was free. Still, love is insidiously compelling. Who
can say what love would or would not beguile or goad him into doing?
The old-fashioned man, always reminding himself that women haven’t an
equal chance with men, was inclined to be considerate in his dealings
with a woman. The new-fashioned man lets her look out for herself. I
am not sure that he is wrong. Perhaps some who have read thus far will
guess the reason for my doubt.
You may imagine how impatiently I waited for Edna to arrive. I am
afraid Rossiter found me difficult in those intervening days. Only
the weak sort of men and women are easy for an intelligent person to
live with. Men and women of positive character have their impossible
moods. I made this remark to Mary Kirkwood on that yachting trip in
the Sound. And her quick answer was: “Yes, that’s true. But everything
worth while is difficult. Weathering the stormy days would have its
compensations--and more.” What a woman! No wonder I loved her.