Rossiter--I believe I have mentioned the name of my new secretary--was
lying in wait for me at the hotel entrance. He read me a telegram from
Margot: Edna was ill, was not expected to live, begged me to come at
once.
I wrote to Mary Kirkwood--a brief repetition of what I had said to
her--“of what I know both your intelligence and your heart are saying
to you, dear.” I told her that Edna was desperately ill and had sent
for me, and that I should be back as soon as I could get away. I went
on to say many things such as a man deeply in love always says. No
doubt it was a commonplace letter, as sincere love letters are apt
to be; but because it was from my heart I felt that, for all the
shortcomings, it would go to her heart. I admit I am not a facile
love-maker. I have had little practice. And I suspect, those who are
facile at love-making have got their facility by making love speeches
so often when they were not in earnest that they cannot but have lost
all capacity to be in earnest.
Toward noon the next day Rossiter and I and my valet were set down at
the little station of Kesson Wells, half an hour out from London in
Surrey. We were in the midst of about as beautiful a country us I have
seen. I am a narrow enough patriot not to take the most favorable
view of things foreign. But I must admit that no other countryside can
give one the sense of sheer loveliness that one gets in certain parts
of England. I am glad we have nothing like it at home; for to have it
means rainy weather most of the time, and serf labor, and landlord
selfishly indifferent to the misery of the poor human creatures he
works and robs. Still, I try to forget the way it came in the joy of
the thing itself--as you, gentle reader, forget the suffering and death
of the animals that make the artistic and delicious course dinners you
eat.
We were received with much ceremony at the station. My money was
being exercised by those who knew how to do it. After a drive between
perfumed and blossoming hedgerows and over a road as smooth and clean
as a floor we came to Garton Hall, the place my son-in-law had leased
until his new house should be ready. It was a modern house, as I
noted with relief when we were still afar off, and while not large,
was a most satisfactory embodiment of that often misused and often
misunderstood word comfort. To live in the luxurious yet comfortable
comfort obtainable in England only--indoors, in its steam-heated or
Americanized portions--one must have English servants. I am glad we do
not breed English servants in America; I am glad that when they are
imported they soon cease to be the models of menial perfection they
are at home. But when I am in England I revel in the English servant.
To find him at his best you must see him serving in the establishment
of a great noble. And my son-in-law was that; and the establishment
over which Margot presided, but with which she was not permitted to
interfere in the smallest detail because of her utter ignorance of all
the “vulgarities” of life, as became a true lady of our quaint American
brand--the establishment was a combination of the best of the city with
the best of the country, a skillful mingling of the most attractive
features of home, club, and hotel.
My first question at the station had, of course, been as to Mrs.
Loring. I was assured that her ladyship’s mother was somewhat better,
but still awaiting the dangerous crisis of the fever. Margot, not a
whit less girlish for her maternity, met me in the doorway, and had the
nurse there with the boy--the Earl of Gorse. They said he looked like
me--and he did, though I do not believe they thought so. Why should
they say it? I was still a young man and might marry again. I fancy
the same prudent instinct prompted them to give him Godfrey as one of
his four or five names. Why do I think they did not believe he looked
like me? Because all of them were ashamed of everything American. In
the frequent quarrels between Margot and Hugh, he never failed to use
the shaft that would surely pierce the heart of her vanity and rankle
there--her low American birth, in such ghastly and grotesque contrast
to the illustrious descent of her husband. She had an acid tongue
when it came to quarreling; she could hurl taunts about his shifts
to keep up appearances before he met her that made ugly and painful
marks on his hide. She had discovered, probably by gossiping with some
traitor servant, that he had been flouted by a rich English girl for
a chauffeur--and you may be sure she put it to good use. But nothing
she could say made him quiver as she quivered when he opened out on the
subject of those “filthy bounders in the States.”
Do not imagine, gentle reader, that my daughter was unhappily married.
She would not have exchanged places with anyone but the wife of a duke;
and Hugh--well, he needed the money. Nor should you think that they
lived unhappily together. They saw little of each other alone; and in
public they were as smiling and amiable with each other as--perhaps as
you and your husband.
A fine baby was the Earl of Gorse--one who in a decent environment
would have grown up a sensible, useful person. But hardly, I feared,
when he was already living in his own separate apartment, with his
name--“The Earl of Gorse”--on a card beside the door, and with all the
servants, including his mother, treating him as if he were of superior
clay. This when he barely had his sight. They say a baby learns the
utility of bawling at about three days old; I should say the germ of
snobbishness would get to work very soon thereafter.
You are waiting to hear what was the matter with Edna. No, it was not
a fake illness to draw me within reach for some further trimming.
She had indeed fallen dangerously ill--did not expect to live when
Margot telegraphed me. It was an intestinal fever brought on by the
excesses of the London season. I wonder when the biographers, poets,
playwrights, novelists, and other gentry who give us the annals of the
race will catch up with the progress of science? How long will it be
before they stop telling us of germ and filth diseases as if they were
the romantic physical expressions of soul states? There was a time when
such blunders were excusable. Now, science has shown us that they are
so much twaddle. So, gentle reader, I cannot gratify your taste for
humbug and moonshine by telling you that Edna was stricken of remorse
or of overjoy or of secret grief or of any other soul state whatever.
The doctor bosh was, of course, nervous exhaustion. It always is if
the patient is above the working class. The truth was that she fell
ill, even as you and I. She ate and drank too much, both at and between
meals, and did not take proper care of herself in any way. She wore
dresses that were nearly nothing in cold carriages and draughty rooms,
when she was laden with undigested food. Vulgar--isn’t it? Revolting
for me to speak thus of a lady? But I am trying to tell the truth,
gentle reader, not to increase your stock of slop and lies which you
call “culture.” And if a lady will put herself in such a condition,
why should it not be spoken of? Why go on lying about these things,
and encouraging people to attribute to sensitive nerves and souls the
consequences of gluttony, ignorance, and neglect?
I am not criticising Edna for getting into such an internal physical
state that a pestilence began to rage within her. The most intelligent
of us is only too foolish and ignorant in these matters, thanks to
stupid education from childhood up. And she has the added excuse of
having been exposed to the temptations of a London season. She fell; it
is hardly in human nature not to fall.
You have been through a London season? It is a mad chase from food to
food. You rise and hastily swallow a heavy English breakfast. You ride
in the Row a while, ride toward a lunch table--and an English lunch,
especially in the season, means a bigger dinner than any Frenchman or
other highly civilized person ever willingly sat down to. Hardly is
this long lunch over before it is time for tea--which means not merely
tea, but toast, and sandwiches, and hot muffins, and many kinds of
heavy cake, and often fruit or jam. Tea is to give you an appetite for
the dinner that follows--and what a dinner! One rich, heavy course upon
another, with drenchings of wine and a poisonous liqueur afterward.
You sit about until this has settled a bit, then--on to supper! Not so
formidable a meal as the dinner, but still what any reasonable person
would call a square meal. Then to bed? By no means. On to a ball, where
you eat and drink in desultory fashion until late supper is served.
You roll heavily home to sleep. But hardly have your eyes closed when
you are roused to eat again. It is breakfast time, and another day of
stuffing has begun.
Starvation, they tell me, is one of the regular causes of death in
London. But that is in the East End. In the West End--and you, gentle
reader, are interested only in that section--death, I’ll wager,
reaps twenty from overfeeding to one he gets in the East End through
underfeeding. Famine is a dreadful thing. But how characteristic of the
shallowness of human beings it is that you can make a poetic horror
out of famine, when no one would listen while you told the far more
horrible truth of the frightful ravages of overfeeding, chief cause
of all the diseases that torture and twist the human body, aging and
killing it prematurely.
Edna had been for many years most cautiously careful of her health. She
loved her youth, her beautiful body. She fought against her natural
fondness for food and wine. I fancy that, for this first season after
freedom she relaxed her rules, and turned herself loose to “celebrate.”
I know she must have had something of this sort in mind, because her
French maid--I could not talk with the Italian--told me that madame had
arranged an elaborate programme of “cures” on the Continent after the
season. “And they were to be serious cures,” said she.
Her illness took such a course of ups and downs, with death always
hovering, that it was impossible for me to leave. I wrote Mary; I got
no reply. I sent Rossiter to Paris; he reported that Mrs. Armstrong
and Mrs. Kirkwood had left for the country, but that he could get no
address.
You probably picture me as scarcely able to restrain myself from acting
like a madman. How little you know of me! Do you think I could have
achieved my solid success before I reached forty-five years if I had
been one of the little people who fret and fume against the inevitable?
All men who amount to anything are violent men. Jesus, the model of
serenity and patience, scourged the money changers from the temple.
Washington, one more great exemplar of the majesty of repose, swore
like a lunatic at the battle of Monmouth. These great ones simply
had in the highest form the virtues that make for success in every
department of leadership. Certainly, I am a violent man; but I have
rarely been foolish enough to go crazy to no purpose.
What could I do but wait? And over that beautiful, quiet country place
floated the black cormorant, with wings outspread and hollow, burning
eyes bent eagerly downward. I waited, not in fury, but oppressed by a
deep melancholy. For the first time in my life I was thinking seriously
of death. To any man no decisive event of life is so absolutely
unimportant as his own death. I never have wasted, and never shall
waste, a moment in thinking of my death. It may concern others, but how
does it concern me? When it comes I shall not be there. The death of
another, however--that is cause for reflection, for sadness. I knew,
as did no one else, how intensely Edna loved life, how in her own way
of strain and struggle she enjoyed it. And to me it was pitiful, this
spectacle of her sudden arrest, her sudden mortal peril, as she was
about to achieve the summit of her ambition.
I wondered as to Frascatoni. I pictured him waiting, with those
tranquil, weary eyes already looking about for another means to his aim
of large fortune should this means fail. There I misjudged him; for,
one day as I stood in a balcony overlooking the drive he came rushing
up in a motor, and my first glance at his haggard face told me that
he loved her. In a way it is small compliment to a woman to be loved
by the fortune-hunting sort of man; for, he does not release himself
until he has the permit of basest self-interest. But Frascatoni,
having released himself, had fallen in love with all the frenzy of his
super-refined, passionately imaginative nature.
After a few minutes he drove away. I do not know what
occurred--naturally, they would not speak of his call and I did not ask
questions. I can imagine, however. She seemed better that day, and he
must have gone away reassured. He was sending, every morning, enormous
quantities of flowers; such skill and taste showed in the arranging
that I am sure it was not the usual meaningless performance of rich
people, who are always trying to make money-spending serve instead of
thoughtful and delicate attention.
Nearly a month dragged along before she was able to see me. As I have
explained, her beauty was not dependent upon evanescent charms of
contour and coloring, but was securely founded in the structure of her
head and face and body. So, I saw lying weakly in the bed an emaciated
but lovely Edna. Instantly, on sight of her, there came flooding back
to me the memory of the birth of Margot, our first child--how Edna
had looked when they let me go into the humble, almost squalid little
bedroom in the flat of which we were so vain. She was looking exactly
so in this bed of state, in this magnificent room with the evidences of
wealth and rank and fashion on every side. She smiled faintly; one of
the slim weak hands lying upon the cream-white silk coverlet moved. I
bent and kissed it.
“Thank you for being here,” she murmured, tears in her eyes. Her lips
could scarcely utter the words.
“You must not speak, your ladyship,” warned the nurse. To flatter
Americans and to give themselves the comfortable feeling of gratified
snobbishness English servants address us--or rather our women--as if we
had titles.
“You are to get well rapidly now,” I said.
“You’ll stay until I can talk to you?”
“Yes,” I said--what else could I say?
They motioned me away. I had committed myself to several weeks more of
that futile monotony--and I no longer had the restraint of the sense
that she might die at any moment.
Even had I been willing to break my promise I could not have done so;
for she would have me in every morning and every afternoon to look at
me, and they told me that if I were not there to reassure her, it would
undoubtedly cause a change for the worse. I stayed on and wrote to Mary
Kirkwood--all the time with the fear that my letters were not reaching
her, but also with the unshakable conviction that she was mine. You
smile at this as proof of my colossal vanity. Well, your smile convicts
you of never having loved. The essence of love is congeniality.
Appetite is the essence of passion--which, therefore, has no sense of
or especial desire for mutuality. Passion is as common as any other
physical appetite. Love is as rare as are souls generous enough to
experience or to inspire it. The essence of love is congeniality--and
I _knew_ there was a sympathy and understanding between me and Mary
Kirkwood that made us lovers for all time.
There came a day--how it burned into my memory!--when Edna was well
enough to talk with me. Several days before and I saw that it was not
far away, and I awaited it with fierce impatience; she would tell me
why she had sent for me and I should be free to go. It was one of those
soft gray days of alternating rain and sun that are the specialty of
the British climate. Edna, with flowers everywhere in her sitting room,
was half reclining in an invalid chair, all manner of rich, delicate
silk and lace assistants to comfort, luxury and beauty adorning her
or forming background for her lovely face and head. I do not think
there is a detail of the room or of her appearance that I could not
reproduce, though at the time I was unaware of anything but her
voice--her words.
I entered, seated myself in the broad low window opposite her. She
looked at me a long time, a strange soft expression in her weary
eyes--an expression that disquieted me. At last she said:
“It is so good to be getting well.”
“And you are getting well rapidly,” I said. “You have a wonderful
constitution.”
“You are glad I am better, Godfrey?”