“How could I help seeing it? Why, you treated me precisely as if I were
another man. Not that I didn’t like it, on the whole. A woman gets
tired of being always on guard.” She smiled at herself. “That sounds
horribly conceited. But you know what I mean. The men never lose a
chance to practice. Then, too--well, if a woman has the reputation of
being rich she need not flatter herself that it is her charms that do
all the drawing.”
“That’s the supreme curse of money--it all but cuts one off from love
and friendship. Fortunately it, to a great extent, takes the place of
them.”
“I don’t like to hear you say that,” said she.
“How many poor people get love and friendship?” replied I. “Isn’t
it the truth that there is little--very, very little--real love
or friendship in the world? All I meant was that money, and the
independence and comfort and the counterfeit of affection it brings,
are better than nothing at all.”
“Oh, I see,” said she. “You are so sensible--and you don’t cant. That
was why I liked to talk with you. At first I thought you cynical and
hard. That’s the first impression plain good sense makes. We are used
to hearing only shallow sentimentality.”
“The unending flapdoodle,” said I.
“Flapdoodle,” agreed she. “Then--I began to discover that you were
anything but hard--that you looked at people as they are, and liked
them for themselves, not for what they pretended to be. I was beginning
to trust you--to venture timidly in the direction of being my natural
self--when you left.”
“Well--here I am again,” said I. “And we start in afresh.”
She smiled with embarrassment. “Yes,” she said hesitatingly. “But the
circumstances have changed somewhat.”
I know full well now what I should have said. I should have replied,
“Yes--we are both almost free--but soon will be altogether free--I
in six months, you as soon as you break your engagement.” That would
have been bold and intelligent--for it is always intelligent to make
the issue clear at the earliest possible moment. But I did not speak.
I remained silent. Why? Because as I was talking with her I was
realizing that I had been deceiving myself in a curious fashion. I had
been so concentratedly in love with her-- Gentle reader, I see the
mocking smile on your shallowly sentimental face. You are ridiculing
a love that could have such restraint as mine--that could bear with
Edna, could wait, could refrain from any of the familiar much-admired
impetuosities and follies. You cannot understand. In this day when men
no longer regard or feel their responsibilities in taking a more or
less helpless woman to wife, your sense of the decencies is utterly
corrupted. But let me say that no matter how ardently and romantically
a man may conduct himself, a woman would do well to take care how she
trusts him if he has a bad or even a doubtful record as to his way of
meeting his responsibilities of whatever sort. That kind of love may
“listen good,” but it does not “live good.” However--as I was about
to say when your smile interrupted me, my all-absorbing love for Mary
Kirkwood had misled me into assuming, with no reason whatsoever, that
she understood all, that she knew I was eager to come to her, and would
come as soon as I could. You will say this was absurd. Granted. But
is not a man in love always absurd? You will say it was egotistical.
Granted. But is not a man in love always egotistical? It is not the
realities but the delusions that keep us going; and in those long
months of waiting, of hoping often against hope, I had to have a
delusion to keep me going. But now, her friendly, simply friendly, way
of talking to me made me see that I had her yet to win, that I could
not speak out directly as I had planned. You, who probably know women
well, may say that this was a mistake. Perhaps. Nevertheless _I_ could
not have done otherwise.
You will say that women do not know their own minds, but have to be
told. I admit it. You will say my silence was timidity. I admit it.
I could not talk of love to a woman until I was sure she wished to
hear. I had the timidity of the man to whom woman and love are serious
matters; the timidity unknown to the man who makes love to every
passable female at whom he has a chance; the timidity which all women
profess to approve, but which, I more than suspect, appeals only to
the jaded palate of the woman who has long made love and passion her
profession.
As Beechman was busy with a novel I had everything my own way without
strategy during those following days. There are a thousand attractive
places to go in and near Paris, and I was resourceful in contriving
excursions for the days when there was no chance of seeing only her.
Almost every day the London papers or the Paris _Herald_ printed
something about Edna and the brilliant season she was having in London;
often not far away from her name in a list of guests was the name of
Prince Frascatoni. My own activities, more Bohemian as was my taste
and the taste of my friends--and I may say the taste of civilized and
intelligent Paris--my activities were not recorded in the papers. I
fancied they were unobserved. I was soon to be undeceived.
I wonder who the people are that write anonymous letters--and give
anonymous “tips” to society journals? Every once in a while by
mischance--often by my having made a remark that was misinterpreted
into something malicious or low, utterly foreign to my real meaning--I
have had some fellow-being suddenly unveil a noisome corner in his or
her soul for confidently awaited sympathy; and I have almost literally
shrunk back in my horror at the cesspool of coarseness, or at the
vicious envy. Have you had that experience? No doubt scattered among
us ordinary folk, neither particularly good nor particularly bad,
well rather than ill-disposed and amiable, if not too severely tried
or tempted--no doubt, scattered among us there are not a few of these
swine souls or snake souls, hid beneath a pleasant smile and fine
raiment. And these are they who give off the foulness of the anonymous
letters and the anonymous tip.
In one of the minor London society papers appeared this paragraph which
I am sure I quote word for word:
“American Paris is much amused these beautifully fine spring days
with the ardent love-making of a recently divorced railway ‘baron.’
The lady is herself a divorcee of several years standing and is
supposed to be engaged to a famous young literary man who is all
unaware of what is going on.”
I know of five copies of this journal that were mailed with the
paragraph marked. The five were received by Edna, Margot, myself, Mary
Kirkwood, and Hartley Beechman. I have often mentally gone through the
list of my acquaintances in search of the person who was responsible
for this thing. I have some extremely unpleasant characters in that
list. But I have never been able to suspect who did it. Not improbably
the guilty person is some one in other respects not a bad sort--for
almost any given cut from that vast universal, human nature, contains
something of everything.
I had an engagement with Mary Kirkwood to walk in the Bois and have tea
the afternoon of the day this paragraph reached me. When I arrived at
her apartment she came down ready to go. Her costume was so lovely and
I so delighted in her that I did not immediately note the heavy circles
round her eyes nor the drawn expression of her mouth. I did not dream
that she knew of the paragraph. I had read it and had dismissed it
from my mind. The anonymous letter and the anonymous newspaper attack
were old familiar stories to me, as they are to every man who attains
distinction in active life. But as we drove toward the Bois I happened
to catch a glimpse of her by way of the mirror in the frame of the
taxi. I saw the evidence of suffering--and the wistful, weary look in
her beautiful eyes.
“What is it?” said I. “You have had bad news?”
“Yes,” replied she.
“Can I help?”
“Don’t let’s talk of it now,” said she. “Wait until we are in the
woods.”
Soon after we passed the entrance gates we descended and rambled away
over the not too even ground, along the indistinct paths under the
fascinating little trees. It was a gorgeous, perfumed May day. You
know the Bois--how lovely it is, how artfully it mingles the wild and
the civilized, suggesting nature as a laughing nymph with tresses half
bound, half free, with graceful young form half clad, half nude. We
rambled on and on, and after half an hour seated ourselves where there
were leaves and the slim graceful trunks on every side and the sound of
falling water like the musical voice of the sunbeams.
Mary drew a long sigh. “I feel better,” she said.