XIII

Not a shadow of doubt lingered. She was gone; I was free. Her manner

had been the manner of finality. Her reluctance and her sadness were

little more than the convention of mourning which human beings feel

compelled to display on mortuary occasions of all kinds. Beneath the

crepe I saw a not discontented resignation, a conviction of the truth

that life together was impossible for her and me.

My male readers--those who have a thinking apparatus and use it--will

probably wonder, as I did then, that she had overlooked certain obvious

advantages to be gained through refusing to divorce me. She knew me

well enough to be certain I would not compel her to go to America and

live with me, but if she insisted would let her stay in Europe or

wander where she pleased. This would have given her all the advantages

of widowhood. Free, with plenty of money, she could have led her own

life, without ever having to consult the conveniences and caprices of

a husband. It seemed to me singularly stupid of her to resign this

signal advantage, to tie herself to a husband she could not ignore, a

husband she already saw would bore her, as poseurs invariably bore each

other--to tie herself to such a man with no compensating advantage but

a title. Indeed, so stupid did it seem that from the moment she began

to waver about confirming the divorce I all but lost hope of freedom.

My women readers will understand her. A man cannot appreciate how

hampered a woman of the lady class is without a legitimate male

attachment of some kind--a husband, a brother, or a father in constant

attendance, ready for use the instant the need arises. Our whole

society is built upon the theory that woman is the dependent, the

appendage of man. Freedom is impossible for a woman, except at a price

almost no woman voluntarily pays. To have any measure of freedom a

woman must bind herself to some man, and the bondage has to be cruel

indeed not to be preferable to the so-called freedom of the unattached

female. Thus it was not altogether snobbishness, it may not have been

chiefly snobbishness, that moved Edna to transfer herself to a husband

who would be a more or less unpleasant actuality. She had to have a

man. She wished to live abroad and to be in fashionable society. She

chose shrewdly. I imagine, from several things she said, that she had

measured Frascatoni with calm impartiality, had discovered many serious

disadvantages in him as husband to a woman of her fondness for her own

way. But estimating the disadvantages at their worst, the balance still

tipped heavily toward him.

I am glad I was not born a woman. I pity the women of our day, bred

and educated in the tastes of men, yet compelled to be dependents, and

certain of defeat in a finish contest with man.

Though there was now no reasonable doubt of Edna’s having the decree of

divorce made final, I, through overcaution or oversensitiveness as to

Mary Kirkwood’s rights, or what motive you please, would not let myself

leave London until a cable from my lawyers in New York informed me that

the decree had been entered and that I was legally free. The newspapers

had given much space to our affairs. It was assumed that I had come

abroad “to make last desperate efforts to win back the beautiful and

charming wife, the favorite of fashionable European society.” Stories

had been published, giving in minute detail accounts of the bribes I

had offered. And when the final decree was entered, my chagrin and fury

were pictured vividly.

I did nothing to discredit this, but, on the contrary, helped along the

campaign for the preservation of the literary and journalistic fiction

that the American woman is a kind of divine autocrat over mankind. If

I had been so vain and so ungallant as to try to make the public see

the truth I should have failed. You can discredit the truth to the

foolish race of men; but you cannot discredit, nor even cast a shade

of doubt upon, a generally accepted fiction of sentimentality. And of

all the sentimental fictions that everyone slobbers over, but no one

in his heart believes with the living and only valid faith of works,

the fictions about woman are the most sacred. Further, how many men are

there who believe that a man could get enough of a physically lovely

woman, however trying she might be? Once in a while in a novel--not

often, but once in a while--there are scenes portraying with some

approach to fidelity what happens between a woman and a man who is

of the sort that is attractive to women. Invariably such scenes are

derided or denounced by the critics. Why? For an obvious reason. A

critic is, to put it charitably, an average man. He has no insight; he

must rely for his knowledge of life solely upon experience. Now what

is the average man’s experience of women? He treats them in a certain

dull, conventional way, and they treat him--as he invites and compels.

So when he reads how women act toward a man who does not leave them

cold or indifferent, who rouses in them some sensation other than

wonder whether they would be able to stomach him as a husband, the

critic scoffs and waxes wroth. The very idea that women might be less

reserved, less queenly, less grudgingly gracious than woman has ever

been to him sends shooting pains through his vanity--and toothache and

sciatica are mild compared with the torturings of a pain-shotten vanity.

Edna scored heavily in the newspapers. You would never have suspected

it was her late husband’s money that had given her everything, that

had made her throughout; for, what had she, and what was she, except

a product of lavishly squandered money? Think about that carefully,

gentle reader, before you damn me and commiserate her as in these pages

a victim of my venomous malice.... She was the newspaper heroine of the

hour. If she had been content with this-- But I shall not anticipate.

My cable message from New York came at five o’clock. At half-past six,

accompanied only by my valet, I was journeying toward Switzerland.

Mrs. Kirkwood, I had learned from her brother, was at Territet, at the

Hotel Excelsior, with the Horace Armstrongs. At four the following

afternoon I descended at Montreux from the Milan express; at five, with

travel stains removed, I was in the garden of the Excelsior having

tea with Mrs. Armstrong and listening to her raptures over the Savoy

Alps. Doubtless you know Mrs. Armstrong’s (Neva Carlin’s) work. Her

portrait of Edna is famous, is one of the best examples I know of

inside-outness. Edna does not like it, perhaps for that reason.

Mary and Horace Armstrong had gone up to Caux. “But,” said Neva,

“they’ll surely be back in a few minutes. Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt is

coming at half-past five.”

I instantly recognized that name as the one Edna gave in telling me

that Mary had gone shopping for a title and had invested. I had thought

Edna’s jeer produced no effect upon me. I might have known better. My

nature has, inevitably, been made morbidly suspicious by my business

career. Also, I had found out Robert Armitage as a well-veneered snob,

and this could not but have put me in an attitude of watchfulness

toward his sister, so like him mentally. Also my investigations of

that most important phenomenon of American life, the American woman,

had compelled me to the conclusion that the disease of snobbishness

had infected them all, with a few doubtful exceptions. So, without my

realizing it, my mind was prepared to believe that Mary Kirkwood was

like the rest. When Neva Armstrong pronounced the name Edna had given,

there shot through me that horrible feeling of insufferable heat and

insufferable cold which it would be useless to attempt to describe; for

those who have felt it will understand at once, and those who have not

could not be made to understand. And then I recalled Hartley Beechman’s

jeer, “She’s laughing at us both.” But my voice was natural as I said:

“Tilzer-Borgfeldt. That’s the chap she’s engaged to just now, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Armstrong, who is a loyal friend, flushed angrily. “Mary isn’t

that sort, and you know it, for you’ve known her a long time.”

“Then she’s not engaged to him?” said I.

“Yes, she is,” replied Neva. “And if you knew him, you’d not wonder at

it. I don’t like foreigners, but if I weren’t bespoke I think I’d have

to take Tilzer-Borgfeldt if he asked me.”

“No doubt it’s a first-class title,” said I.

“You know perfectly well, Godfrey Loring, that I don’t mean the title.”

She happened to glance toward the entrance to the garden. “Here he

comes now. You’ll judge for yourself.”

Advancing toward us was a big, happy blond man of the pattern from

which nine out of ten German upper-class men are cut. He had the

expression of simple, unaffected joy natural to a big, healthy, happy

blond youth looking forward to seeing his best girl. He had youth, good

looks, unusual personal magnetism--and you will imagine what effect

this produced upon my mood. I could not deny that Neva was right.

Without a title this man would have all the chances in his favor when

he went courting. He had not a trace of aristocratic futility.

You would have admired the frank cordiality of my greeting. Instead of

sitting down again I glanced at my watch and said:

“Well, my time’s up. I shall have to go without seeing Horace and Mary.”

“But you’ll come to dinner?” said Mrs. Armstrong.

“I’m taking the first express back to Paris,” said I. “I found a

telegram waiting for me at my hotel.”

“Mary will be disappointed,” said Neva. “You’ll give Mrs. Loring my

best?”

I remembered that the English papers, with the news doubtless in it,

would not reach Territet until late that evening or the following

morning. But I could not well tell her what had occurred. “Good-by,”

said I, shaking hands. “Tell them how sorry I was. I may see you all in

Paris.”

And away I went, with not an outward sign of my internal state. In less

than half an hour I was in the Paris express.

* * * * *

I stopped at Paris a month. A letter came from her--a bulky letter. I

tossed it unopened into the fire. A week, and a second letter came. It

was not so bulky. I flung it unopened into the fire. About two weeks,

and a third letter came. I got Rossiter to address an envelope to her.

I inclosed her unopened letter in the envelope and mailed it. I was

giving myself an exquisite pleasure, the keener because it was seasoned

with exquisite pain.

All this time I had been amusing my idle days in the usual fashion.

My readers who lead quiet lives--the women who sit thinking what they

would do if only they were men--the men who slip away occasionally

for a scampish holiday, and return to their sober routine with the

cheering impression that they have been most fearfully and wonderfully

devilish--those women and those men will regret that I refrain from

details of how I amused myself. But to my notion I have said enough

when I have said “in the usual fashion.” It passed the time as probably

nothing else in the circumstances would have passed such tenacious

hours, every one lingering to be counted. But I confess I have never

been virtuous enough to be especially raptured by so-called vice. No

doubt those who divide actions into good and bad, using the good for

steady diet and the bad for dessert, have advantages in enjoyment over

those who simply regard things as interesting and uninteresting. For,

curiously enough, on that latter basis of division practically all the

things esteemed by most human beings as the delightful but devilish

dessert of life fall into the class of more or less uninteresting. But

for the stimulus of the notion that he is doing something courageously,

daringly wicked, I doubt if any but a dull fellow would perpetrate

vice enough to lift the most easily scandalized hands in the world.

The trouble with vice is that it is so tiresome--and so bad for the

health. And most of it is so vulgar. Drinking to excess and gambling,

for instance. I have indulged in both at times, when hard pressed

for ways to pass the time or when in those stupid moods of obstinate

unreasonableness in which a man takes a savage pleasure in disgusting

himself with himself. Drinking has a certain coarse appeal to the

imagination--coarse and slight but definite. But gambling is sheer

vulgarity. I have been called money-mad, because I have made money,

finding it easy and occupying to attend to business. Yet never have I

cared about money sufficiently to take the faintest interest in the

gaming table. Gambling--all forms of it--is for those sordid creatures

who love money, and who have no intelligent appreciation of its value.

Gambling--all the vices, for that matter--is essentially aristocratic;

for, as I believe I have explained, aristocracy analyzes into the

quintessence of vulgarity. The two incompetent classes--the topmost

and the bottommost--are steeped in vice, for the same reason of their

incompetence to think or to act.

A fourth letter, the bulkiest of all, came from Mary Kirkwood. A few

hours before it was delivered a telegram came from her:

“A letter is on the way. Godfrey, I beg you to read it. I love you.”

I tore up the telegram, sent back the letter without opening it. You

are denouncing me as inhuman, gentle reader. Perhaps you are right.

But permit me to point out to you that, if I had not in my composition

a vein of iron, I should never have risen from the mosquito-haunted

flats of the Passaic. Also, gentle reader, if I had been a man of the

ordinary sort would Mary Kirkwood have been sufficiently interested in

me to send those letters and that telegram?

A day or so after the return of her last letter I was seized--I can’t

say why--with a longing to see my father and mother and sister, on that

lonely farm out in New Jersey. I had never felt that desire since I

first left home, but had made my few and brief visits out of a sense

of duty--no, of shame. The thought of them gave me no sensation of

horror, as it gave Edna and her daughter. When I remembered them it

was simply as one remembers any random fact. They did not understand

me; and in them there was nothing to understand. We had few subjects

for conversation, and those not wildly interesting and soon exhausted.

You will smile when I say I loved them. Yet it is the truth. We do not

always love those we like to be with; we do not always like to be with

those we love.

There was nothing to detain me in Paris. The hours hung like guests

who do not know how to take leave. So not many days elapsed between

my seizure and my appearance at the spacious and comfortable stone

farmhouse where the four old people were awaiting in a semi-comatose or

dozing state what they firmly believed was a summons to a higher life.

Their belief in it, like that of most religious people, was not strong

enough to make them impatient to get it; still they believed, and found

the belief a satisfactory way of employing such small part of their

minds as remained awake.

I had not seen them or their place in several years, so I was

astonished by the changes. My sister Polly--a homely old maid--and

Edna’s father had some glimmerings of enterprise. Polly took in and

read several magazines, and from them gathered odds and ends of

up-to-date ideas about dress, about furnishing, about gardens. With

the valuable assistance of old Weeping Willie she had wrought a most

creditable transformation. The old people now “looked like something,”

as the saying is. And the place had a real smartness--both within and

without.

Polly--she was about eight years my senior, but looked old enough to be

my mother--Polly watched me anxiously as I strolled and nosed about. My

delight filled her with delight.

“You’re not so ashamed of us, perhaps?” said she.

“I never have been,” replied I. Nor did I put an accent on the personal

pronoun that would have been a hint about somebody else’s feelings.

“Well--you ought to have been,” said she. “We were mighty far behind

even the tail of the procession.”

“I’ll admit I like this better than the way we used to live in Passaic.

Polly, you’ve got the best there is going. All the rest--all the luxury

and other nonsense--is nothing but a source of unhappiness.”

She did not answer. I noted a touching sadness in her expression.

“You don’t agree with me?” said I.

“Yes, I do,” replied she emphatically. “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“What have _you_ got to be unhappy about?”

“You think I’m ungrateful to you,” said she, with quick sensitiveness.

“But I’m not, Godfrey--indeed I’m not.”

“Ungrateful?” I laughed. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

“You’ve done all you could--all anyone could. And in a way I am happy.

But----”

“Yes?” I urged, as she hesitated.

“Well, I’ve found out--looking back over my life--I’ve found out that

I-- It seems to me I’ve got all the _tools_ of happiness, but nothing

to _work on_. I keep thinking, ‘How happy I could be if I only had

something to work on!’”

I was silent. A shadow crept out of a black corner of my heart and cast

a somberness and a chill over me.

“You understand?” said she.