THE OTHER WOMAN
Where grown men are concerned--men of the Anglo-Saxon breed, that
is--emotion cannot be other than spasmodic. I have seen a gentlemanly
convict conduct himself with great dignity during the march to the
scaffold. It was not, poor devil, that he did not fear death, nor that
it was a grateful thing to be dropped ignominiously out of life on a
June morning, but rather that he, after breaking many of his country’s
laws, obeyed the one inflexible social edict which regulates good and
bad “form.” Therefore, with a wry grimace when he emerged from the
whitewashed corridor, and saw that his earthly pilgrimage would end
near the further wall of a small courtyard, he carried himself with
a composure far beyond that manifested by any other member of the
melancholy procession. A criminal in one instinct, he was a man in all
the rest. I suppose the real wrench had come and gone weeks before.
Now, I had no knowledge of the torture Karl had undergone until he
turned towards me again, and I found a gravity in his face which
had not been there before. Since that morning two little lines had
developed between his eyebrows at the junction of nose and forehead.
That is nature’s way of minting her crude gold--just a touch of the
finger of experience, no matter if the agony be of soul or body, and
there is no machine can stamp its token more indelibly.
“Maggie’s message is her last word to me,” he said. “She means that she
will endeavor never to see or hear from me again.”
Even his father was troubled by the marked restraint in his voice, but
I felt that the mere effort of discussion would be helpful.
“That is a blank impossibility,” I cried. “You two will find each other
whether you like it or not. You did so before and you will do it again.
The settlement is not in your hands, unless I err greatly.”
“You do not understand,” said Karl. “Perhaps you may meet her sometime.
Please tell her what I have said. Let it rest at that.”
“If you mean that all this tomfoolery is going to stop here and now
I am heartily glad of it,” broke in his father. “Had I been aware of
what was going on it would have been ended long since. Good gracious!
what was this unfortunate fellow, Constantine, to us that we should
bother our heads about him? I assure you, Karl, that the only thing
which troubles me is the fear lest this latter-day witchcraft of yours
may not be interfering with your work if not actually undermining your
health.”
I regret to say that my respected friend reminded me just then of
Balaam smiting the ass when she refused to follow the path he had
chosen. But I did not urge the parable aloud. How could a modern man
of business agree to the contention that his son had set in motion an
irresistible natural force? Most certainly he “stood in a narrow place,
and there was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.”
But Karl’s obvious wishes should be respected. I pretended to agree
with his father. I used the customary platitudes anent his career
and the necessity there was to endeavor in future to repress any
manifestation of his sixth sense. And while I was talking, I saw the
ghost of a sad smile flickering on Karl’s lips, because he knew that I
knew better. I laughed myself (ostensibly at some trivial remark by the
elder Grier that there would be some sense in telegnomy if Karl could
summon a waiter quickly by its exercise) when I thought of Hooper’s
scorn of the notion that a fellow shouldn’t see through a brick wall if
he had the power. I was sure that he would pounce on the suggestion as
another instance of British disinclination to adopt new ideas!
We parted soon, and I regard it as not the least amazing feature of my
really close association with Karl that I did not see him again for
five years.
That is the sort of queer prank the tides of existence will play
occasionally with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. The great
highways of rail and ocean may be bringing the whole family of the
globe into closer communion, but they have, too, the strange result
of separating units in a way not dreamed of by our forefathers. Thus,
when my wife and I were in the Western States of America, Karl was
in Germany, making the acquaintance of his mother’s relatives, and
learning again the iron-clamped syllables which bind German thought in
words which are whole phrases.
We came back to Europe, to watch the upspringing of our own youngster,
and we transferred bag and baggage to Heidelberg at the time chosen by
Mr. and Mrs. Grier to establish themselves in a house in Curzon Street,
Mayfair.
Of course we kept in touch by correspondence. Mrs. Grier and my wife
sent each other family news, Grier gave me occasional “tips” which, by
operation of that wonderful machine, the Stock Exchange, took money
from some stranger’s pocket and put it into mine, merely because one of
us bought and the other sold stock, which neither of us possessed, in a
railway, or a mine, or an industrial company, in which we had not the
slightest commercial interest.
Karl, beyond semi-humorous hints, said little about telegnomy. He
kept me duly advised of his progress in the University. During the
month of May of the year following Constantine’s death he obtained
that much-sought document of little future value which set forth
the degree of: “GRIER, KARL, é Coll. Æn. Fac., die 30° Mensis Maii,
Anni--Examinatus, prout Statuta requirunt,” and the rest of it. Then,
with other youthful sages, he wrote his name in a leather-covered book,
subscribed himself “Filius Generosis,” and was finally admitted “ad
gradum Baccalaurei in Artibus.”
He did not secure honors, and in this respect justified his father’s
fear that the adjectival sixth sense was anything but a help to him.
The truth was that Karl, to whom scholastic work was too easy, was
prone to dream away many an hour which might have been applied more
profitably from the “Ita testamur” point of view of the examiners.
He never alluded to Maggie in his letters, and his omission in this
respect reminds me that I also have been slow in recording the one
really interesting bit of news I learnt from Hooper when I met him in
New York.
After Constantine’s death, who do you think hunted up the whereabouts
of the girl and her mother and brought back into their lives, with
redoubled poignancy, the unhappy memory of a tragedy? None other than
Constantine’s solicitors! The unfortunate Armenian made a holograph
will in New York (which, though self-written, was quite to the point
and properly witnessed), leaving to Margaret Vane Hutchinson, daughter
of the late William Hutchinson, tea-planter, Darjeeling, Bengal (an
archaic description of Darjeeling), and at that present date residing
with her mother, Mrs. Alice Holroyd Hutchinson, in the Pall Mall Hotel,
London, England, “all the real and personal estate” of which he died
possessed. To account for this astounding bequest he stated that the
said “Margaret Vane Hutchinson is the woman I intend to marry,” a
written testimony of his views which is all the more to his credit
seeing that Steindal’s Mephistophelian method of securing the girl’s
submission contemplated no such honorable course. Indeed, I have
thought better of the Armenian ever since I heard of that clause in the
will.
Naturally, Constantine’s Armenian and Levantine relatives were
very wroth. They would have liked to torture with hot irons the
straightforward American secretary who found the will among his
employer’s papers, and took good care that it reached the hands of
the trustees and solicitors to the estate. They wanted to contest it
on various grounds, none creditable, it may be safely inferred, and
had the matter been left to the girl herself she would have executed
any legal transfer of the property to the disappointed crew without
consideration.
Her mother, however, thought they had done quite enough already for
Constantine’s sake. Maggie, after a terrible scene in London on the
day we were in Liverpool, obtained Mrs. Hutchinson’s consent to the
abrupt closing of a professional career and a departure forthwith to
the Italian Lakes, where they could live in economical retirement, and
Maggie might devote herself to painting.
The mother yielded because she feared for her daughter’s reason. In
sober earnest, the girl was nearly distraught, and was not in her right
mind until they quitted England. But although adamant in her resolve to
withdraw from the world (had Maggie been a Roman Catholic nothing could
have kept her from entering some religious community), she rapidly
recovered her normal good health and abounding good spirits. Hence,
Mrs. Hutchinson exercised her native shrewdness when the solicitors ran
her to earth, and it was proposed that her daughter should forego the
fortune thrust upon her.
She referred the lawyers to the firm who looked after her own moderate
investments; there was much legal squabbling, and, you may be sure,
some nice grapes off the bunch fell into the legal maw. Ultimately, the
other Constantines purchased the business interests of their kinsman
at about half their value--it would never do for Christian accountants
to be taking annual stock of their dealings--and Maggie received, from
this source and from the dead man’s personal investments, nearly three
quarters of a million sterling!
“Yes, sir,” said Hooper, in whom the keen air of New York had brought
out the latent financial instinct, “over three and a half million
dollars”--how he rapped out those wonderful syllables in clear staccato
accents--“that was what Maggie scooped out of the pot when Karl called
Paul and she saw both hands.”
“Where are Maggie and the millions now?” I asked admiringly.
“I’ve bin thinkin’. There ain’t much in this codification-of-laws
notion anyhow. Guess I’ll take a vacation, an’ work up some sort of
telegnomy that will materialize,” said he.
But he was not serious. He was already earning a reputation as a
smart young lawyer, having passed with distinction all the qualifying
examinations in the States, and, indeed, he told me later that he
was “chewing on,” the offer of a post as legal adviser to the Paris
Embassy. So far as he knew, the Hutchinson ladies never left Italy.
In the winter, Maggie might be seen copying pictures in the galleries
of Florence or studying architectural effects in Rome or Venice--her
pictures having attained some fame for their vivid handling of sunlight
on the brilliant Italian exteriors. In the summer, she and her mother
dwelt in a small castle, the Castello Rondo, to be precise, on a wooded
hill overlooking Lake Como. These details Hooper had gathered from
people who had friends among the American colony at Florence. Maggie
was very pretty, very reserved, devoted to her art and to old silver.
That was all he knew about her.
I was in Heidelberg when the curtain rose again on the Grier drama.
“Adventures come to the adventurous,” says the old saw, and the
homeless literary free-lance of to-day has his surfeit of excitement,
full measure, just as spicy a draught as ever tickled the palate of
any wanderer through the Dark Ages. I have already commented on the
peculiar way in which the tragedy of life obtains its stage effects,
for all the world like any writer of those thrilling “spectacular”
plays which in England used to be labelled “transpontine.” Here is a
typical first act. Scene, a peaceful village; the good young man and
the rustic beauty are discovered living in Sunday-school innocence with
their bucolic parents. Enter two well-dressed villains, of both sexes,
and, after quarter of an hour’s excitement, the stalwart hero is lugged
off, R., to penal servitude for a crime he never committed, and the
heroine falls fainting, L., while the cloth descends to slow music,
_tremolo con molto espressione_. Something of the kind happened to me.
We, that is Mr., Mrs., Master and friends, had been enjoying a boating
excursion on the Neckar, with a grand drive through the Schonau woods,
a fine meal in an ancient inn, and a moonlight-cum-mandolin journey
homewards.
And there, at our comfortable lodgings, I found a telegram awaiting me:
“Karl is causing us some trouble. Can you come and help?--GRIER.”
My wife had heard from Mrs. Grier only a month ago. There was no
mention of any shortcoming on Karl’s part in that missive. Indeed, it
was chiefly intended to warn us of an impending visit by a tremendous
person, the Baroness von Liebenzell-Zavelstein, one of Karl’s maternal
great-aunts, the stoutest and most aristocratic lady in the Grand Duchy.
Yet Grier was not a man to telegraph for me without good cause. Never
did I regret more keenly the inspissated brains which refused to
exhibit the least sign of a sixth sense. How useful it would have been
now if I could “send out” Hertzian waves and “call up” Karl on our
private installation of wireless telephony! But my dense membranes
forbade any such short cut towards knowledge, even if the remainder of
the machinery were not rusty with disuse, so, while I was packing, I
could only indulge in theorizing.
“The sure thing is that Maggie has vacated the Castello Rondo,” said I
to my better half. “A beautiful and rich young Englishwoman could never
immure herself for life in the Italian hinterland.”
“It is the height of the season in town. Karl and she have met in
society,” was the practical response.
“Um! A coincidence.”
“What is the coincidence?”
“It is just five years ago to-day since I went to London with Karl. It
was then the ‘height of the season’ as you call it.”
“That is what everybody else calls it.”
“My dear, the phrase is hackneyed. The wife of a writer should seek
a polished synonym. Let me help you to a selection: the fashionable
zenith, the apotheosis of Park Lane, even the saturnalia of society--”
“Are you going without your boots?”
Well, I reached Charing Cross next evening, and there, on the platform,
stood Grier _père_ to meet me. He was alone.
“I have taken rooms at an hotel,” he said after our first hearty
greeting. “I don’t want you at the house, because I fancy you will do
more good by getting Karl to yourself of an evening, so I must ask you
to be my guest at the Pall Mall Hotel.”
“That is odd,” I said.
“You will understand better when we have had a talk.”
I did not explain that my ejaculation referred to the choice of the
hotel and not to his action in sending me there. We entered his
carriage and quitted the station.
“I hope there is nothing seriously wrong with Karl?” I began.
“No, no. Not at all. But you are the only man who really knows, or
pretends to know, anything about this inf---- this wretched sixth
sense of his, and it has come on again, worse than ever, since his
engagement.”
“Hertzblut! Is he going to marry Maggie after all?”
“Maggie! Maggie! Why do you mention her? He is engaged to the Honorable
Nora Cazenove, daughter of Lord Sandilands.”
I leaned back in the carriage. I could almost have chuckled.
“Ah,” I murmured softly to myself. “The other woman has arrived! Now
there will be ructions!”