There were but two in my party--Dugdale, the playwright, and myself.
A more amusing man than Dugdale never lived. He was amusing both
consciously and unconsciously. A mountain of a man--bone and muscle,
little fat. He had eyes that were large, but were so habitually
squinted, the better to see every detail of everything, that they
seemed small; and his expression, severe to the verge of savageness,
changed the instant he spoke into childlike simplicity and good humor.
He made money easily--large sums of money--for he had the talent for
success. But he spent long before he made. I think it must have been
his secret ambition to owe everybody in the world--except his friends.
From a friend he never borrowed. The general belief was that he had
never paid back a loan--and I have no reason to doubt it. What did he
do with his borrowings? Loaned them to his friends who were hard up. If
the list of those he owed was long, the list of those who owed him was
longer. If he never paid back, neither was he ever paid.
He could work at sea, or anywhere else--no doubt even in a balloon.
On that trip he toiled prodigiously, crouched over a foolish little
table in his cabin, smoking endless cigarettes and setting down with
incredible rapidity illegible words in a tiny writing that contrasted
grotesquely with the enormous hand holding the pencil. He labored
altogether at night, after I had gone to bed. He was always astir
before me. He slept unbelievably little, probably kept up on the
quantities of whisky he drank. However that may be, he was as active by
day physically as he was mentally by night. He was all over the boat,
always finding something to do--something for me as well as for himself.
The only terms on which Dugdale would consent to go were that I should
keep him away from New York not less than two months, and that I
should take no one else. I promptly assented to both conditions. It
was not the first time he had put me under a heavy debt of gratitude
for congenial society. We had made several long trips together, always
with satisfaction on both sides. Whatever else you may think of me, I
hope I have at least convinced you that I am not one of those rich men
who rely for consideration upon their wealth. I believe I am one of the
few rich men who can justly claim that distinction. When I ask a man
less well off than I am to dine with me--or to accept my hospitality
in any way--I ask him because I want him. And I do not either directly
or indirectly try to make him feel that he is being honored. I would
not ask the sort of man who feels honored by being in the society of
bank accounts or of any other glittering symbols in substitute for
good-fellowship.
You will see, gentle reader, that my list was short indeed.
It is one of the not few drawbacks of riches that they rouse the
instinct of cupidity in nearly all human beings. The rich man
glances round at a circle of constrained faces, each more or less
unsuccessfully striving to veil from him the glistening eye and the
watery lip of the gold hunger. Probably you know how pepsin is got for
the market--how they pen pigs so that their snouts almost touch food
which they can by no straining and struggling reach; how the unhappy
creatures soon begin to drip, then to slobber, then to stream into
the receiving trough under their jaws the pepsin which the sight of
the food starts their stomachs to secreting. As I have looked at the
parasite circles of some of my friends I have often been reminded of
the pepsin pigs. Some of my friends like these displays, encourage them
in every way, associate solely with pepsin pigs. I confess I have never
acquired the least taste for that sort of entertainment.
I have traveled the world over, and everywhere I have found men either
industriously engaged in cringing or looking hopefully about for some
one to cringe to them. Well--what of it?
I owe Dugdale a debt I cannot hope to repay. He, a light-hearted
philosopher, made me light-hearted. He kept my sense of humor and my
sense of proportion constantly active. There is a stripe of philosopher
of the light-hearted variety who lets his perception of the fundamental
futility of life and all that therein is discourage him from everything
but cynical laughter at himself and at the world. That sort is a
shallow ass, fit company for no one but the bleary, blowsy wrecks to
whose level he rapidly sinks. Dugdale--and I--were of the other school.
We did not--at least, not habitually--exaggerate our own importance.
It caused no swelling of the head in him that his name was known
wherever people went to the theater, or in me that I usually had to be
taken into account when they did anything important in finance. We did
not measure the world or rank its inhabitants according to the silly
standards in general use. But at the same time we appreciated that to
work and to work well was the only sensible way to pass the few swift
years assigned us.
It takes a serious man to make even a good joke. A frivolous person can
do nothing. That is why so many of our American women, and so many of
the men, too, sink into insignificance as soon as the first freshness
of youth is gone from them. Youth has charm simply as youth because it
seems to be a brilliant promise. When the promise goes to protest the
charm vanishes.
I shall reserve what I saw and heard in South America for another
volume, one of a different kind. I shall go forward to the following
spring when I was once more in New York. Edna and her daughter--so
I read in the newspapers--were living in fitting estate in a famous
villa they had taken in the fashionable part of the south of France,
“for the health of the two young sons of the marchioness.” Frascatoni
was gambling at Monte Carlo, Crossley was at his government post in
London. I could fill in the tiresome details for both the wives and the
husbands--and so, probably, can you. While some business matters were
settling, I was turning over in my mind plans for making a systematic
search for a wife.
I count on your amusement confidently, gentle reader. If you wished a
fresh egg for your breakfast or a suit of clothes to be worn a few
weeks and discarded, or an automobile, you would set about getting it
with some attention to the best ways and means. But, saturated as you
are with silly sentimentalities about marriage, you believe that the
most important matter in the world--the matter which determines your
own happiness or unhappiness and also the current of posterity--you
believe that such a matter should be left to the lottery of chance!
Well, I had long since abandoned that delusion, and I purposed to
establish my life with as much thought and care as I gave all other
matters.
“A dull fellow,” you are saying. “No wonder his wife fled from him.”
I do not wonder that you regard as dull anything that is intelligent.
To ignorance intelligence must necessarily seem dull. When any subject
of real interest is brought up, some silly, empty-headed pretty woman
is sure to say, “How dull! Let’s talk of something interesting.” And
there will always be a chorus of laughing assent--because the woman is
pretty. So I accept your sneer at me with a certain pleasure. I wish
to be thought dull by some people, including some women very good to
look at. But out of vanity and in fairness to Edna I must acquit her of
having thought me dull--after she had been about the world.
One evening at the Federal Club I fell in with my old acquaintance,
Sam Cauldwell, the fashionable physician. He was something more than
that--or had been--but was too lazy to use his mind when his gift
for sympathetic and flattering gab brought him in plenty of money.
Cauldwell was a trained, thoroughgoing sycophant and snob. But he saw
the humorous aspect of the gods he was on his knees before--and saw the
humor of his being there. He knew the kind of man I was, and liked to
take me aside and make sport of his deities for an hour over a bottle
of wine. Also--he liked the idea of being, and of being seen, intimate
with a man conspicuous for wealth and for the social position of his
family--the ex-husband of a princess, the father of a marchioness.
Gentle reader, if you wish to see human nature to its depth, you
must occupy such a position as mine. Believe me, you are mistaken in
thinking the traits you shamedly hide are unique. There are others like
you--many others.
Cauldwell was perhaps ten years older than I, but being a
well-taken-care-of New Yorker, he passed for a young man--which,
indeed, he was. I do not regard fifty as anything but young unless it
insists upon another estimate by looking older than it really is. I
shall assuredly be young at fifty, perhaps younger than I am now, for
I take better care of my health every year--and I have health worth
taking care of. But, as I was about to say, Cauldwell had a meditative
look that night as we sat down to dinner together. And when he had
drunk his third glass of champagne he said:
“Loring, why the devil don’t you get married?”
I felt that he had something especial to say to me. I answered
indifferently, “Why don’t _you_?”
“Very simple,” replied he. “Not rich enough. To marry in New York a man
must be either a pauper or a Crœsus.”
“Then marry a rich girl,” said I.
“I’d have done it long ago if I could,” he confessed with a laugh. “But
I’ve never been able to get at the girls who are rich enough. Their
mammas guard them for plutocrats or titles. But you-- Really, it’s a
shame for you to stay single. I know a dozen women who’re losing sleep
longing for you--for themselves, or for some lovely young daughter.”
“Pathetic,” said I.
“I see that irritates you. Well--you needn’t be alarmed. You’re famed
for being about the wariest bird in the preserves. And I know you don’t
want that kind of woman. Why not take the kind you do want?”
“Where is she?” said I.
“I could name a dozen,” rejoined he. “But I shan’t name any. I have one
in mind. A doctor has the best opportunity in the world to find out
about women--about men, too--the truth about them.”
I laughed. “If I wanted misinformation about human nature,” said I,
“I’d go to a doctor--or a preacher. They’re the depositories of all the
hysterical tommyrot, all the sentimental lies that vain women and men
think out about themselves and their sex relations.”
His smile was not a denial. “Yes, I’ve been rather credulous, I’ll
admit,” said he. “And men and women do tell the most astounding
whoppers about themselves. Especially women, having trouble with their
husbands. I try not to believe, but I’m caught every once in a while.”
A gleam in his eye made me wonder whether he wasn’t thinking of some
yarn Edna had spun for him about me. Probably. There are precious few
women, even among the fairly close-mouthed, who don’t take advantage
of the family doctor to indulge in the passion for romancing.
“But I wasn’t thinking of any confession,” he went on. “Several women
have confessed a secret passion for you to me--with the hope that I’d
help them. The woman I have in mind isn’t that sort. I don’t know that
she cares anything about you. I only know that she’s exactly the woman
for you.”
“Interesting,” said I.
“She’s young--unusually pretty--and in a distinguished way. She knows
how to run a house as a home--and she’s about the only woman I know in
our class who does. She’s got a good mind--not for a woman, but for
anybody. And she needs a husband and children and a home.”
He must have misunderstood the peculiar expression of my face, for he
hastened on:
“Not that she’s poor. On the contrary, she’s rich. I’d not recommend a
poor girl to you. Poor girls can think of nothing but money--naturally.”
“Everybody, rich and poor, thinks of money--naturally,” said I.
“Guess you’re right,” laughed he. “But it _looks_ worse in a poor girl.”
“I should say the opposite. A feeding glutton looks worse than a
feeding famished man.”
“At any rate--this woman I have in mind isn’t poor. That’s not a
disadvantage, is it?”
“Not a hopeless obstacle,” said I. “By the way, what _are_ her
disadvantages?”
“Well--she’s been married before.”
“So have I,” said I.
“But, on the other hand, she has no children.”
“Neither have I,” said I, without thinking. I hastened to add, “My only
child is married.”
“And splendidly married,” said he with the snob’s enthusiasm.
“To return to the lady,” said I dryly. “Why don’t you marry her
yourself?”
He had drunk several more glasses of the champagne. He laughed. “She
wouldn’t look at _me_. She sees straight through me. She wants a
man with domestic tastes. I’m about as fit for domestic life as a
fire-engine horse for an old maid’s phæton.”
“Well--who is it?” said I.
“I’m afraid you’ll think she’s been at me to help her. But, on my
honor, Loring, she isn’t that sort. We’ve talked of you. For some
reason, ever since I’ve known her--well, I’ve never seen her without
thinking of you. I often talk of you to her--not marrying talk--I’d not
dare--but in a friendly sort of way. She listens--says nothing.”
“But she is sickly,” said I.
“Sickly?” he cried. He looked horrified and amazed. “Good Lord, what
gave you that notion?”
“You said you saw her often.”
“Oh, I see. It was her brother who had the illness.”
“All right. Bring her round and I’ll look her over,” said I carelessly.
And I forced a change of subject.
Had Mary Kirkwood been taking this agreeable, insidious doctor into
her confidence? I did not know. I do not know. I have reasons for
thinking he told the literal truth. And yet--women are queer about
doctors. However, that’s a small matter. The thing that impressed me,
that agitated me as he talked, was the picture he, by implication,
was making of Mary Kirkwood, alone again, and evidently absolutely
unattached--living alone in the country as when I first knew her.
I tossed and fretted away most of the hours of that night with the
result that at breakfast I resolved to leave town again, to put the
width of the continent or of the ocean between me and temptation to
folly. But one thing and another came up to detain me. It was perhaps
ten days later that I, walking alone in the Park, as was my habit,
found myself at a turning face to face with her. I don’t think my
expression reflected credit upon my boasted self-control. As for her--I
thought she was going to faint--and she is not one of the fainting
kind. We gazed at each other in fright and embarrassment, and both
had the same child’s impulse to turn and fly--one, of those sensible,
natural instincts for the shortest way out of difficult situations that
the cowardly conventionality of the grown-up estate makes it impossible
to obey. But--we had to do something. So, we laughed.
She put out her hand; I took it. “How well you are looking,” said
I--and it was the truth.
“You, too,” said she.
I turned to walk with her. We strolled along cheerfully and
contentedly, talking of the early spring, of flowers, and birds, and
such neutral matters. I was fluent, she no less so. Our agitation
disappeared; our sense of congeniality returned. Our acquaintance
seemed to have lumped back to where it was before we had that first
confidential talk together on the yacht. After perhaps an hour, as
agreeable an hour as I ever spent, she said she must go home, as she
had an engagement. On the way to the Sixty-fifth Street entrance the
conversation lagged somewhat. We were both busily resolving the same
thing--the matter of explanations. Now that I was seeing her again--a
wholly different matter from inspecting my defaced and smirched and
battered image of her--battered by the blows of my jealousy, and
anger, and scorn--now that I was seeing _her_ again, I could not but
see and feel that she was in reality a sweet and simple and attractive
woman. No doubt she had her faults--as all of us have--grave faults of
inheritance, of education, of environment. But who was I that I should
sit in judgment on her? I realized that I had judged her unjustly so
far as her treatment of me was concerned. Assuming that she was tainted
with snobbishness, assuming that her defects were as bad as I had
thought in my worst paroxysms, still that did not alter the charms and
the fine qualities.
“We are friends?” said I abruptly.
“I hope so,” said she. She added: “I know so.”
“Without discussion or explanation?”
“That is best--don’t you think?” replied she. “I am--not--not proud of
some things I did.”
“Nor I, of some things I did.”
“I should like to forget them--my own and yours.”
“I, too. And explanations do not explain. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
She smiled and nodded. She said:
“The latter part of the week I’m going back to the country. Perhaps
you’ll spend Saturday and Sunday there?”
“Thank you,” said I. “Let me know at the Federal Club if your plans
change.”
At her door we shook hands, but both lingered. Said she:
“I am glad we are friends again.”
“It was inevitable,” I replied. “We _like_ each other too well not to
have come round. Bitternesses and enmities are stupid.”
“And sad,” said she.
When we met again--at her house in the country--there was no
constraint on either side. We knew that neither of us had the power to
breach, much less to remove, the barrier between us. We ignored its
existence--and were content.
You may have observed that I have rarely been able to speak of Edna
without resentment. I shall now tell you why:
The friendship between Mary Kirkwood and me presently set the
newspaper gossips to talking. Our engagement was announced again and
again--the announcement always a pretext for rehashing the story of the
matrimonial bankruptcy through which each had passed. But as we were
above the reach of the missiles of the scandalmongers the worst that
was printed produced only a slight and brief irritation. This until
the Princess Frascatoni began her campaign of slander.
I shall not go into it. I shall simply say that she ordered one of
her hangers-on--one of the semi-literary parasites to be found in the
train of every rich person--to attack Mary and me as keeping up an
intrigue of long standing, the one that was the real cause of my wife’s
divorcing me. When I read the first of these articles I believed, from
certain details, that no one in the world but the Princess Frascatoni
could have inspired it. But with my habitual caution I leashed my
impetuous anger and did not condemn her until I had investigated. Is it
not strange, is it not the irony of fate that in every serious crisis
of my life, except one, I should have had coolness and self-control,
and that the one exception should have been when I loved Mary Kirkwood
and condemned her unheard? After all, I am not sure that love isn’t a
kind of lunacy.
Why did Edna engage in that campaign of slander? Why did she say
to everyone from this side the most malicious, the most mendacious
things about my relations with Mrs. Kirkwood--that she had ignored the
intrigue as long as she could for the sake of her dear daughter; that
it had driven her from New York, had forced her to get a divorce, and
so on through the gamut of malignant lying? There may perhaps be a clew
to the mystery in the failure of her second marriage--as a marriage,
I mean; not, of course, as a social enterprise, for there it was a
world-renowned success. If the clew is not in Edna’s emptiness of heart
and boredom, then I can suggest no explanation. I imagine she had been
hearing and reading the gossip about an impending marriage between
Mrs. Kirkwood and me until she had concluded that there must be truth
in it--and by outrageous slander she hoped to make it impossible.
The first effect was as she had probably calculated. Mary and I avoided
each other. Mary hid herself and would see no one. Armitage and I for
a time kept up a pretense of close friendship, or, rather, publicly
again pretended a friendship that had long since all but ceased. But
when the talk both in the newspapers and among our acquaintances grew
until the “at last uncovered scandal” was the chief topic of gossip, he
and I almost stopped speaking. You may wonder why he or I or both of us
did not “do something” to crush the absurd lie. Gentle reader, did you
ever try to kill a scandal? It is done in novels and on the stage; but
in life the silly ass who draws his sword and attacks a pestilent fog
accomplishes nothing--beyond attracting more attention to the fog by
his absurd and futile gesticulations. The world had made up its nasty
little mind that the relations between Mary Kirkwood, divorced, and
Godfrey Loring, divorced, were not, and for years had not been, what
they should be. And the matter was settled. I think Armitage himself
believed. I know Beechman believed, for he pointedly crossed the street
to avoid speaking to me.
I stood this for a month. Then I went down to Mary’s place on Long
Island.
You may imagine the excitement my coming caused among the honest
yeomanry gathered at the station--those worthy folk who peep and pry
into the business of their fashionable overlords, and are learning
to cringe like English peasants. I found Mary setting out for a
ride--through her own grounds; she was ashamed to venture abroad.
I came upon her abruptly. Instead of the terror and aversion I had
steeled myself to meet, I got a radiance of welcome that made my heart
leap. But in an instant she had remembered and was almost in a panic.
“Please send the groom away with the horse,” said I. “Let us walk up
and down here before the house.”
She hesitated, obeyed.
The broad space before the house was laid out in hedges and blooming
beds with a long, straight drive leading in one direction to the
highroad, in the other direction to stable, carriage house, and garage.
When we were securely alone I said:
“Have you missed me?”
“Our friendship meant a lot to me,” replied she.
“I have discovered that it’s the principal thing in my life,” said I.
We paced the length of the drive toward the lodge in silence. As we
turned toward the house again I said:
“I have chartered the largest yacht I could get--for a cruise round the
world.”
A pause, then she in a constrained voice: “When do you start?”
“Immediately,” I answered. “Perhaps to-morrow.”
She halted, leaned against a tree, and gazed out through the shrubbery.
“You’ve not been well?” said I.
“I never am, when I lose interest in life,” replied she. “You will be
gone--long?”
“Long,” said I. “Either we shall not see each other again for
years--or--” I paused.
After a wait of fully a minute she looked inquiringly at me.
“Mary,” said I, “shall we take a motor launch and go over to
Connecticut and be married?”
She began to walk again, I keeping pace with her. “It’s the only
sensible thing to do,” said I. “It’s the only way out of this mess. And
to-morrow we’ll sail away and not come back until--until we are good
and ready.”
I waited a moment, then went on, and I had the feeling that I was
saying what we were both thinking: “We’ve had the same experience--have
been through the same bankruptcy. It has taught us, I think--I hope--I
can’t be sure; human nature learns slowly and badly. But I see a good
chance for us--not to be utterly and always blissfully happy, but to
get far more out of life than either is getting--or could get alone.”
As we turned at the group of outbuildings she looked at me and I at
her--a look straight into each other’s souls. And then and there was
born that which alone can make a marriage successful or a life worth
the living. What is the difference between friendship and love? I had
thought--and said--that love was friendship in bloom. But as Mary and I
looked at each other, I knew the full truth. Love is friendship set on
fire. We did not speak. We glanced hastily away. At the front door she
halted. In a quiet, awed voice she said:
“I’ll change from this riding suit.”
And what did I say, gentle reader, to commemorate our standing upon
holy ground? I did no better than she. With eyes uncertain and voice
untrustworthy and hoarse I said:
“And tell your maid to pack and go to town with the trunks--go to the
landing at East Twenty-third Street. Can she be there by four or five
this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll see you at the bay--at the launch wharf--in half an hour?
I’ve got to send off a telegram.”
“In half an hour,” said she, and with a grave smile and a wave of her
crop she disappeared into the house.
* * * * *
At seven that evening we steamed past Sandy Hook. At ten--after an
almost silent dinner--we were on deck, leaning side by side at the
rail, near the bow. We were alone on the calm and shining sea. No land
in sight, not a steamer, not a sail--not a sign of human existence
beyond the rail of our yacht. Her arm slipped within mine; my hand
sought hers. Not a sail, not a streamer of smoke. Alone and free and
together.
* * * * *