I drifted into the Amsterdam Club one evening--to write a note or send
a telegram--and there sat Hartley Beechman. The instant he saw me he
sprang up and made straight for me. His expression was puzzling, but
not hostile--still, I was unobtrusively ready. Said he in a straight,
frank fashion:
“Loring, I want to apologize to you. I made a damned ass of myself
in Green Park last summer. My excuse is that I was more than half
crazy----”
I put out my hand. “I half guessed at the time,” said I. “I know all
about it now.”
We looked at each other with the friendliness that has become the
stronger by a mended break--for broken hearts and broken lives and
broken friendships are much the stronger if the break mends. Said he:
“One way of measuring the strength of a man is the length of the
intervals between the times when he makes a fool of himself about a
woman. My first came at eighteen, my next at thirty-eight. Not a bad
showing, I flatter myself--eh?”
“Uncommonly good,” said I.
“And the second shall be the last.”
“Optimism!” I warned him laughingly. “Beware of optimism!”
“No. I shall write about women, but I’ll see no more of them. I’ve
got hold of myself again. I’m as good as ever--better than ever,
probably. But--it cost! And I’ll not pay that price again. For a while
I thought it was you who had upset my happiness. Then--” He gave a
loud, unnatural laugh--“That German purchase! I saw she had been simply
playing with me. You know how fond women of that sort are of playing
with romantic or sentimental ideas. But when it came to the test--why,
she would have married only a fortune or a title.”
I made no comment. He was saying only what I thought, what I believed
true. But I hated to hear it.
“I may wrong her,” pursued he reflectively. “Not altogether, but to a
certain extent. I rather think the impulse to something saner and less
vulgar was there--actually there.”
As he was looking at me inquiringly I said: “I think so.”
“But--nothing came of it. And there’s little in these fine impulses of
which nothing comes.”
“Little?” laughed I. “Why, they produce the most beautiful decorative
effects. Life would be barren without them. What a repulsive sight
the poor little human animal would be, grunting and grubbing about,
thinking always of its beloved self--what a repulsive sight if it
didn’t wear the flowers of high ideals in its ears--and the jewels of
fine impulses ringed in its nose.”
“_I_ think it would look better without them,” said he. “Less
ridiculous--less contemptible.”
“To you--yes. Because you’re like I am--coarse. But not to itself and
its fellows.”
“I’m going back to the woods to-morrow,” said he.
“Better come on a yachting trip to South America with me,” said I.
He flushed. “Thank you--but I can’t do that,” replied he. “I can’t
afford it.”
It was my turn to flush. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I spoke without
thinking--spoke on impulse. You are quite right.”
“A man’s a fool or a sycophant who goes where he can’t pay his own
way,” continued he. “I’ve come to realize that. I’ll do it no more.
I’ll stick to my own class. I’ve been justly punished for blundering
out of it. But not so severely punished as I should have been had my--”
he smiled ironically--“my love affair prospered.”
He thought for several minutes, then he said: “I wonder--when the clash
came--would I have gone with her or she with me?”