I have not been unaware of your anger and disgust with me, gentle
reader, during the progress of the preceding scene. In real life--in
your own life--you would have understood such a scene. But you are
not in the habit of reading realities in books--real men, real women,
real action. Everything is there toned down, put in what is called an
artistic perspective. Well, I am not an artist, and perhaps I have no
right to express an opinion upon matters of art. But I’ll venture. To
me art means a point of view upon life; so, I see nothing artistic,
nothing but more or less grotesque nonsense, in an art that is not a
point of view but a false view. But to keep to Edna and myself.
You think I should have been moist and mushy, should have taken her
back, should have burdened myself for the rest of my days with her
insincere and unsympathetic personality. You are saying: “But after
all she loved him.” Even so--what does the word love mean when used
by a person of her character? It means nothing but the narrowest,
blighting selfishness. She had for years used me without any thought
for or of my feelings, wishes, needs. When we moved into our grand New
York house she gave me as a bedroom the noisiest room in the house,
one overlooking the street where the rattling of carriages, cabs, and
carts and the talk and laughter of pedestrians kept me awake until far
into the night and roused me about four in the morning--this, when I
was working with might and main all day long and needed every moment
of rest I could get. Why did she give me that room? Because she wanted
the only available quiet room--beside her own bedroom--for a dressing
room! She said the light in the room she gave me was unfit to dress
by! I thought nothing of all this at the time. It is characteristic of
American wives to do these things; it is characteristic of American
men to regard them as the matter of course. I cite the small but not
insignificant incident to show the minuteness of her indifference
to me. I have already given many of the larger though perhaps less
important instances, and I could give scores, hundreds, in the same
tenor. She professed to love me at that time--and she either had
or simulated a very ardent passion. But that was not love, was it?
Love is generous, is considerate, finds its highest pleasure of
self-gratification in making the loved one happy. Such a conception of
love never entered her head--and how many American women’s heads does
it enter? How it amuses me to watch them as they absorb everything,
give nothing, sit enthroned upon their vanities--and then wonder and
grow sulky or sour when their husbands or lovers tire of the thankless
task of loving them and turn away--or turn them away.
If Edna had awakened to genuine love, gentle outraged reader, would
she not have been overwhelmed with shame as she looked back upon her
married life? Would she have come to me with the offer of her love
as a queen with the offer of her crown? She would not have indulged
in empty words; she would have tried to _do_ something by way of
reparation. She would not have demanded that she be taken back; but,
feeling that she had forfeited her rights, she would have tried to find
out whether I would consent to take her back; and if she had found that
I would not, she would have accepted her fate as her desert.
In those circumstances do you think I could have laughed at her and
remained firm? No one not a monster could have done that.
But the thing she called love was not love at all, was merely as I
described it to her--a newly discovered way of using me after she had
thought all possible use for me exhausted. Such, gentle reader, is
the simple truth. Yet because I had intelligence enough to see the
truth and firmness enough not to be swayed by shallow and meaningless
sentimentalities, you call me hard, harsh, cruel. One of your impulsive
kindly souls would have taken her weeping to his arms, would have
begun to live with her. And there the novel would have ended, with
you, gentle reader, all tears and thrills. For, having no imagination,
you would have been unable to picture the few weeks of cat-and-dog
life after the “happy ending,” then the breaking apart in hatred and
vindictiveness. But this is not an “artistic” novel. It is a story of
life, a plain setting forth of actualities, in the hope that it may
enable some men and women to understand life more clearly and to live
their own lives more wisely and perhaps less mischievously.
I went to my daughter. “Margot,” said I, “your mother threatens to try
to stop the divorce. It is best for both her and me that we be free. I
am determined not to live with her again, for I abominate the sort of
life she and you lead. If you will do what you can to bring her to her
senses, I will see that you don’t regret it.”
Margot rather liked me, I believe. Not as a father; as a father I made
her ashamed, like everything else American about her. But it was a
resigned kind of shame, and she appreciated my money, my good nature
about it and my services in bringing back her marquis and making
possible her son the earl. I knew I could count on her active sympathy;
for she would vastly prefer that her mother be the Princess Frascatoni.
My mother, Mrs. Loring; my mother, the Princess Frascatoni. Pronounce
those two phrases, gentle reader, and you will grasp my meaning.
I was by no means sure she would have any influence with her mother,
even though she was now the wife of one marquis and the mother of a
marquis to be, with about half the high British peerage as relatives.
But I was desperate, and a desperate man clutches at anything.
“I think you are right, papa,” said she in her mother’s own grave sweet
way. “You and mamma never have been suited to each other. Besides, I
don’t want her away off in America where I never expect to be again.
Some of the girls who have married here like to go back there and
receive the flattery and the homage. But it seems cheap to me. I’m sure
I don’t care what the Americans think of me. I’m not snobbish, as I
used to be. I am English now--loyal English to the core.”
“This is the place for your mother, too.” An idea occurred to me. “If
I took your mother back with me, I would have my parents and hers live
with us in a big place I’m going to buy in the country. You don’t know
your grandparents well?”
She was coloring deeply. She must have heard more than her mother
dreamed she knew. “No, papa,” said she.
“Your mother and I were disgracefully neglectful of them,” pursued I.
“But I shall make up for it, as far as I can. I wish you would come
over and visit us.”
“I should like it, papa,” murmured she, ready to sink down with shame.
“They are plain people,” I went on, “but they are good and honest--much
ahead of these wretched parasites you’ve been brought up among.... Talk
to your mother about them. Tell her what I have said.”
She understood thoroughly; that is the sort of thing fashionable people
always understand. “I shall, papa,” said she. And I could see her
putting on a fetching air of sweet innocence and telling her mother.
“And if she does not like it,” continued I--“can’t bear the scandal and
ridicule among her fashionable friends--why, she can desert me. And
that would give me ground for divorce.”
“She would be dreadfully unhappy over there,” said Margot.
“I am sure of it,” said I, and my accent was a guarantee.
Should I see Edna again and picture our life together in the house of
love she was bent upon? I decided against it. Margot’s pictures might
lack the energy and detail of mine. They would more than make up in
bringing home to her the awful reality, as she would believe Margot
where she might suspect me of merely threatening what I would never
carry out. So, off I went to London--to wait.
About the hardest task in this world is inaction when every fiber of
your being is clamorous for action. Yet I contrived to sit tight--for
a week--for two weeks. I have always regarded myself as too impatient,
too impetuous. And, beyond question, my natural tendency is to the
precipitate. But looking back over my life I am astonished--and not a
little pleased with myself--as I note how I have held myself in check,
have confined my follies of rash haste to occasions when miscarriage
was not a serious matter.
Armitage came--on the way from St. Moritz to America. As soon as I
could command the right tone, I said:
“You’ve seen your sister and Mrs. Armstrong? How are they?”
“All right,” replied he indifferently. “Motoring in Spain at present, I
believe.”
“Beechman--he’s with them?”
“No. He’s somewhere hereabouts, I believe. I saw him in Hyde Park the
other day--looking as seedy as if he were pulling out of an illness. I
spoke and he stared and scowled and nodded--like the bounder that he
is.”
“You don’t care for him?” said I, rejoiced by this news of my rival’s
seediness.
“Oh, one doesn’t bother to like or dislike that sort of chap.” He said
this in a supercilious manner--a manner he had never had in the earlier
period of our acquaintance. How the inner man does poke through the
surface when the veneer of youth wears thin!
“For one who despises birth and wealth and rank,” said I, not without a
certain malice, “you have a queer way of talking at times.”
Armitage winced, changed the subject by saying: “And what the devil’s
the matter with _you_? You’re looking anything but fit yourself.”
“Oh--I’m up against it, as usual,” said I gloomily.
He laughed. My pessimism was one of the jokes of my friends. But,
having seen so much of the ravages of optimism--of the cheer-boys-cheer
and always-look-at-the-bright-side sort of thing, I had given myself
the habit of reckoning in the possibilities of disaster at full value
when I made plans. Little people ought always to be optimistic. Then,
their enthusiasm--_if_ directed by some big person--produces good
results, where they would avail nothing could they see the dangers in
advance. But big people must not be--and are not--optimists, whatever
they may pretend. The big man must foresee all the chances against
success. Then, if his judgment tells him there is still a chance for
success, his courage of the big man will enable him to go firmly ahead,
not blunderingly but wisely. The general must be pessimist. The private
must be optimist; for if he were pessimist, if he saw what the general
must see, he would be paralyzed with fear and doubt.
“You’re always grumbling,” said Armitage. “Yet you’re the luckiest man
I know.”
“Perhaps that’s why,” replied I.
He understood, nodded. “Doubtless,” said he.
“What’s luck? Nothing but shrewd calculation. The fellow who can’t
calculate soon loses any windfalls that may happen to blunder his way.
But what’s the grouch now?”