“Since you’ve been over here long enough to--to broaden a little-- You
don’t mind my saying you’ve broadened?”
“It’s true,” said I.
“I’ve fancied perhaps you might be seeing that I wasn’t altogether
wrong in my ideas?”
“Yes?” said I, as she hesitated.
“Margot was telling me about some plans you had--for living on the
other side. You weren’t in earnest?”
I looked at her gravely. “Very much in earnest,” said I. “I shall never
again, in any circumstances, live as we used to live.”
She sank back in her chair, slowly turned her parasol round and round.
“Then--it’s hopeless,” said she, with a sigh that was a sob also. And
the look in the eyes she lifted to mine went straight to my heart. “I
simply can’t stand America,” said she. “It reminds me of--” She rose
impatiently. “If you only knew, Godfrey, how I _loathe_ my origin--the
dreadful depth we came from--the commonness of it.” She shuddered.
“Europe is the place for you,” said I.
“Yes, it is,” cried she. “And we could be happy over here--if you’d
only see it in the right light. Godfrey, I don’t want to--to change.
Won’t you compromise?”
“By conceding everything?” said I good-humoredly. “By becoming the
bedraggled tail to your gay and giddy kite?”
“You simply won’t reason about these things!” exclaimed she. “Yet they
say men are reasonable!”
“My dear Edna, I don’t ask you to make yourself wretched for _my_ sake.
And I don’t purpose to be wretched for _your_ sake.”
She sat down again. The brightness had faded from her. She looked older
than I’d have believed she could. “Well--I see it’s useless,” she said
finally. “And as I’ve got to stay over here, I simply must marry again.
You understand that?”
“Perfectly,” said I.
“Don’t you care the least bit?” said she wistfully.
“You wish me to be unhappy about it,” laughed I, “to gratify your
vanity.”
She sighed again.
“You are content with the settlements?”
“Oh, yes,” said she wearily.
No doubt you, gentle reader, are now completely won over to her and
think that the least I could in decency have done would have been
to insist on her accepting half my fortune. I had no impulse toward
that folly. There is a kind of wife who can justly claim that she is
the equal partner in her husband’s wealth. But not the Edna kind. I
had made my fortune in spite of her. Nor was I keen to give her any
more money than I should be compelled; why turn over wealth to her to
fritter away and to bolster the pretensions of a family of worthless
Italian aristocrats?
With a sudden darting look at me, she said: “You know Frascatoni. What
do you think of him?”
“A fine specimen,” said I. “A fascinating man.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Fascinating enough, I suppose. But--would
you _trust_ him?”
“I would not,” replied I. “Nor any other man. I have long since learned
not to trust even myself. But I’d trust him as far as the next man--as
far as it’s necessary to trust anyone.”
She nodded in appreciation and agreement. “I believe he genuinely cares
for me,” she said, adding with a melancholy look at me, “And it’s
pleasant to be cared about.”
“So I have heard,” said I.
“You never wanted anyone to care about you,” said she. “You are
independent of everything and everybody.”
“That’s safest,” said I.
She did not reply. After reflecting she burst out with, “You ought to
have _made_ me, Godfrey--ought to have trained me to your taste. Women
have to be _made_.”
“Even if that had been possible in this case,” I observed, “I didn’t
know enough.”
Again she thought a long time; then with a sigh she said: “But it’s too
late now. You’re right. It’s too late.”
It puzzled me to note how much the world had taught her in some
ways, and how little in others. But that is a familiar puzzle--the
unexpected, startling ways in which knowledge juts out into ignorance
and ignorance closes in upon knowledge, forming a coast line between
the land of knowledge and the sea of ignorance more jagged than that
of Alaska or Norway. The result is that each of us is a confused
contention of wisdom and folly in which the imperious instincts of
elemental passions and appetites, by their steady persistence, easily
get their way.
“Since I’ve begun to look at these foreign men seriously,” she went on,
“to study them-- It’s one thing to size them up, as you say in America,
with the idea that they’re mere outsiders--acquaintances--social
friends. It’s very different to measure them with a view to serious
relations. I’m not altogether a fool--even from your standpoint--am I,
Godfrey?”
“Distinctly not,” said I.
“Since I’ve been _studying_ these upper-class men over here--I’ve
changed my mind in some respects. I’m not a child, you know. I haven’t
done what I’ve done without using some judgment of men and women.”
She flooded me with a smile of gratitude. “I owe my judgment to you,
Godfrey. You taught me.”
“You never agreed with anything I said--when I did occasionally venture
an opinion.”
“Because a woman disagrees and scorns--it doesn’t follow that she isn’t
convinced.”
“You’ve changed your mind about these men?” said I, for my curiosity
was aroused.
“I find a lack in them. You’re right to a certain extent, Godfrey. They
_are_ futile--the cleverest of them. Culture gives a great deal, of
course.”
“What?” said I.
“It’s too long and involved to explain. And you don’t believe in it.”
“I’m willing to,” said I. “But first, I’d like to know what it is, and
second, I’d like to know what it _does_. I’ve never been able to get
anything but words in answer to either question.”
“Well, _I_ see that it gives a great deal. But I must admit that it
takes away something--yes, much--strength from the mind and softness
from the heart.”
I was astonished at this admission from her--at the admission itself,
at the fresh evidences of what a good natural mind she had. But I
had no desire to discuss with her. I had long outgrown the folly of
discussion with futile people. I was tempted to air my own views of
this so-called culture--how it emasculated where it pretended to
soften; how it discovered nothing, invented nothing, produced nothing,
did not feed, or clothe, or shelter, or in any way contribute to the
sane happiness of a human being; how it unfitted men and women for
active life, made them pitiful spectators merely, scoffing or smiling
superciliously at the battle. But I refrained. I knew she believed
the rôle of spectator the only one worthy a lady or a gentleman--and
certainly it is the only one either lady or gentleman could take
without being exposed as ridiculous. I knew that her wise observations
were clever conversation merely, after the manner of futile
people--that when the time for action came her snobbishness dominated
her.
“I wish these men were not so--so----”
“Good-for-nothing?” I suggested.
She accepted the phrase, though she would have preferred one less
mercilessly truthful.
“You can’t find everything in one person,” said I.
That kind of tame generality--lack of interest thinly veiled in a
polite show of interest--kills conversation and sets a tarrying caller
to moving where dead silence produces a nervous tendency to linger.
Edna extended her arm, resting her hand upon the crook of her parasol
in a gesture of approaching departure. Yet she seemed loth to go. She
rose, but counterbalanced with:
“You know, I suppose, that it’s likely to be Frascatoni?”