“Then you thanked God too soon. The truth is our women are brought up
to be snobs, spenders--useless, vain parasites. Their systems are all
ready to be infected with the title mania.”
Armitage, on his favorite subject, talked and talked. I did not listen
attentively--not so much because I did not like what he was saying or
because I thought him prejudiced as because I knew him to be a secret
snob of the thoroughgoing variety. I suspected that if things were
reversed, if he could get a title by marriage and a position that would
enable him to swagger and would make everyone bow and scrape, he would
put the eagerest of the female title-hunters to the blush. It may be
just and proper to criticise women for being what they are. But let us
also hear in mind that it is not their fault but the fault of their
training; also that the men do no better when they have the chance to
live in idle vanity upon the labors of some one else.
On the following Monday my emissary returned from Garton Hall full to
the brim with news.
But first he had again to assure himself that there was no pretense in
my seeming anxiety to be free. I saw doubt of me in his eyes before he
began his adroit cross-examination. I gave no sign that I knew what
he was about; for in those cases the one chance of convincing is to
submit to whatever tests may be applied. It was not unnatural that he
should doubt, coming as he did direct from seeing and talking with the
charming Edna. Men are habitually fools about women--not because women
make fools of them but because they enjoy the sensation of making fools
of themselves. That is a sensation much praised by poets, romancers,
sentimentalists of all kinds; and because of this praise it has come
to have a certain fictitious value, has come to be a cheap way for
a man to imagine himself a devil of a fellow, a figure of romantic
recklessness. There is no limit to which the passion for living up to
a pose will not carry a man. Men have flung away their fortunes, their
lives, for the sake of a pose; martyrs have burned at the stake for
pose. So a man of experience even more than your ordinary brick-brained
citizen is distrustful of his fellow men where women are concerned.
And it is nothing against Armitage’s intelligence, nor any sign of his
having a low estimate of my strength of mind, that he tried to make
absolutely sure of me before proceeding.
Then, too, there was Edna’s charm. Women--I mean, our fashionable and
would-be fashionable American women of all classes, from Fifth Avenue
to the Bowery, from Maine to the Pacific--women are parlor-bred--are
bred to make an imposing surface impression. The best of them fool
the most expert man, as Edna had been fooling Armitage during those
two days down in the country. A man has to live with them to find
them out. And often, our men, being extremely busy and kindly disposed
toward their women and unobservant of them and uncritical of them, do
not find them out for many years. The house is run badly, the money
is wasted, the children are not brought up right. But the man lets it
pass as “part of the game.” He tells himself that not much but good
looks is to be expected of a woman; he buries himself still deeper in
his business. Then-- If he is a successful man, along about forty when
he has got up high enough to be able to relax from the labor of his
career and thinks of enjoying himself, he tries to form an alliance
for pleasure with his wife. And lo and behold, he discovers that he is
married to a vain, superficial fool.
There could have been no more delightful experience than passing a
few days in the society of Edna. She had educated herself, admirably,
thoroughly, for show. She could have fooled the fashionable man his
whole life through, for one cannot see beyond the range of his own
vision. She might have fooled many a serious man of the narrow type;
an excellent shoemaker might easily be misled by a clever showy jack
of all trades into thinking him a master of all trades so long as he
avoided betraying his ignorance of shoemaking. But your successful
American man of the highest type, having a broad range of practical
interests, becomes a shrewd judge of human values. Thus, the American
woman who can pass for brilliant in fashionable society at home
or abroad cannot deceive the American man--for long. Not when he
lives with her. No wonder she finds him coarse; who does not wince
when vanity is stepped on or ignored? No wonder she thinks him
uninteresting. A child would have an equally poor opinion of any person
inexpert at catcher, marbles, and mud pies.
Armitage, in a company of titled people, his nostrils full of his
beloved, stealthily enjoyed perfumes of wealth and rank, was captivated
by Edna. If he had stopped a week or so, his American shrewdness might
have found her out, might have seen why I could view with unruffled
sleeves, as the Chinese say, the loss of so lovely and lively a
companion. But, stopping only for the week end, he became doubtful
of my sincerity. I measured how deeply he had been deluded when he
spoke of her keen sense of humor. Woman nature is too practical, too
matter of fact for even the cleverest of them to have a real sense
of humor--with now and then an exception, of course. Edna had not a
glimmer of appreciation of either wit or humor. But only I, before
whom she dropped all pretenses except those that were essential to her
pose--only I knew this. Before the rest of the world, with the aid of
her vivacity!--What an aid to women is vivacity!--how many of them it
marries well!--With the aid of her vivacity she made a convincing show
not only of appreciating humor and wit but also of having much of both.
At precisely the right place she gave the proper, convincing, charming
exhibition of dancing eyes and pearl-white teeth. And occasionally
with a pretty liveliness she repeated as her own some witticism she
had heard much applauded in another and remote company. But I do not
blame you, ladies, for your inveterate and incessant posing. We men
are determined to idealize and to be gulled, and you need us to pay for
your luxury and your finery.
I let Armitage probe on and on until my impatience for his news would
suffer no further delay. I said:
“I see you refuse to be convinced. So let it go at that, and tell me
what you found out. Is she to marry Frascatoni?”
“As I’ve been telling you, I believe she is in love with you, Loring.”
“But is she going to free me?”
“Unless you do something pretty soon, I’m afraid you’ll lose her.”
It was too absurd that he, who had lived with one of these showy
vivacious women, had found her out and had rid himself of her should be
thus taken in by another of precisely the same kind. But that’s the way
it is with men. They understand why they yawn at their own show piece;
but they can’t appreciate that all show pieces in time produce the same
effect.
“There still remain three weeks before the day on which her lawyers
must ask the judge to confirm the decree,” said I. “Do you think she
will have them do it or not?”
“Unless you get busy, old man----”
“But I shall not get busy. I shall do everything I can to encourage her
to stay free.”
“Then you’ll lose her,” said he. “Frascatoni is mad about her, and he
knows how to make an impression on a woman. It irritated me to see a
damned dago carrying off such a prize--and you know I’m not prejudiced
in favor of American women.”
“I want to see her happy,” said I. “She will be happy with him--so, I
hope he gets her.” I laughed mockingly. “She wouldn’t be happy with an
American, Bob--not even with you.”
He colored guiltily. “That idea never entered my head,” protested he.
But I laughed the more. “And she wouldn’t have you, Bob,” I went on.
“So, don’t put yourself in the way of being made uncomfortable.”
He had enjoyed himself hugely. Not only was my former wife most
entertaining, but also Margot. She had, beyond question, been
beautifully educated for the part she was to take in life. Her
manner--so Armitage assured me--was the perfection of gracious
simplicity--the most exquisite exhibition of the perfect lady--“note
how ladylike I am, yet how I treat you as if you were my equal.”
Gracious--there’s the word that expresses the whole thing. And she
had a quantity of bright parlor tricks--French recitation, a little
ladylike singing in a pleasant plaintive soprano that gave people an
excuse for saying: “She could have been a grand-opera star if she had
cared to go in seriously for that sort of thing.” Also, a graceful
skirt dance and a killing cake walk. She had an effective line of
fashionable conversation, too--about books and pictures, analysis
of soul states, mystic love theories--all the paraphernalia of a
first-class heroine of a first-class society novel. And you, gentle
reader, who know nothing, would never have dreamed that she knew
nothing. You who are futile would not have seen how worthless she
was--except to do skirt dances well enough for a drawing-room or to
talk soul states well enough for a society novel.
The more Armitage discoursed of the delights of his little visit the
more nervous I became lest Edna should again change her mind and
inflict me further. What he had said brought back my life with her in
stinging vividness. I lived again the days of my self-deception, the
darker days of my slow awakening, the black days of my full realization
of the mess my life was, and of my feeling that there was no escape for
me.
“I will admit, Loring,” said Armitage, “that as women go our women are
the best of all.”
“Yes,” I assented, sincerely. “And they ought to be. America is the
best place to grow men. Why shouldn’t it be the best place to grow
women?”
He did not pursue the subject. In his heart he disagreed with me, for
he was wholly out of conceit with everything American. His pose had
been the other way, and he shrank from uncovering himself.
A day or so later I was crossing Green Park when I ran straight into
Hartley Beechman. I smiled pleasantly, though not too cordially. He
planted himself in front of me and stared with a tragic frown. I then
noted that he verged on the unkempt, that he had skipped his morning
shave and perhaps his bath. His stare was unmistakably offensive--the
look of a man who is seeking a quarrel.
“How’re you, Beechman?” said I, ignoring the signs of foul weather.
“Armitage told me you were in town, but didn’t know your address.
Stopping long?”
“You are a scoundrel,” said he.
I shrugged my shoulders. As I was much the larger and stronger man I
could afford to do it. “So I’ve often heard,” said I. “Perhaps it’s
true. What of it? Why should you think I cared to know your opinion of
me?”
“If I send you a challenge will you accept it?”