“THE REAL TRAGEDY OF LIFE.”
MARLOWE had been held above his normal self, not by Emily, but by
an exalting love for her. Except in occasional momentary moods of
exuberant animalism, he had not been low and coarse. Whatever else
might be said of the love affairs whose tombstones strewed his past, it
could not be said that they were degrading to the parties at interest.
But there was in his mind a wide remove between all the others and
Emily. His love for her was as far above him as her love for him
after she ceased to respect him had been beneath her. And her courage
and independence came to her rescue none too soon. He could not much
longer have persisted in a state so unnatural to his character and
habit. Indeed it was unconsciously the desire to get her where he could
gradually lead her down to his fixed and unchangeable level, that
forced him on to join that disastrous issue.
As he journeyed toward London the next night, he was industriously
preparing to eject love for her by a vigorous campaign of consolation.
Vanity had never ceased to rule him. It had tolerated love so long as
love seemed to be coöperating with it. It now resumed unchecked sway.
Before he went to Paris he was much stirred by Victoria’s beauty. He
thought that fear of her becoming a menace to his loyalty had caused
him to appeal to Emily. And naturally he now turned toward Victoria,
and made ready for a deliberately reckless infatuation. He plunged the
very afternoon of his return to London, and he was soon succeeding
beyond the bounds which his judgment had set in the planning. This
triumph over a humiliating defeat was won by many and powerful
allies--resentment against Emily for her wounds to his vanity, craving
for consolation, a vigorous and passionate imagination, the desire to
show his superiority over the fascinating Kilboggan, and, strongest of
all, Victoria’s fame and extraordinary physical charms. If Emily could
have looked into his mind two weeks after he left her, she would have
been much chagrined, and would no doubt have fallen into the error of
fancying that his love had not been genuine and, for him, deep.
He erected Victoria into an idol, put his good sense out of commission,
fell down and worshipped. He found her a reincarnation of some
wonderful Greek woman who had inspired the sculptors of Pericles.
He wrote her burning letters. When he was with her he gave her no
opportunity to show him whether she was wise or silly, deep or shallow,
intelligent or stupid. When she did speak he heard, not her words,
but only the vibrations of that voice which had made her the success
of the season--the voice that entranced all and soon seemed to him to
strike the chord to which every fibre of his every nerve responded.
He dreamed of those gold braids, unwound and showering about those
strange, lean, maddening shoulders and arms of hers.
In that mood, experience, insight into the ways and motives of women
went for no more than in any other mood of any other mode of love. He
knew that he was in a delirium, incapable of reason or judgment. But he
had no desire to abate, perhaps destroy, his pleasure by sobering and
steadying himself.
He convinced himself that Kilboggan was an unsatisfied admirer of
Victoria. When Kilboggan left her to marry the rich wife his mother
had at last found for him, he believed that the “nobleman” had been
driven away by Victoria because she feared her beloved Marlowe
disapproved of him. And when he found that Victoria would never be
his until they should marry, he began to cast about to free himself.
After drafting and discarding many letters, and just when he was in
despair--“It’s impossible even to begin right”--he had what seemed
to him an inspiration. “The telegraph! One does not have to begin or
end a telegram; and it can be abrupt without jar, and terse without
baldness.” He sent away his very first effort:
EMILY BROMFIELD,
--Boulevard Haussmann, Paris.
Will you consent to quiet Dakota divorce on ground of
incompatibility. No danger publicity. You will not need leave Paris
or take any trouble whatever. Please telegraph answer to--Dover
Street, Piccadilly.
MARLOWE.
He was so bent upon his plan that not until he had handed in the
telegram did the other side of what he was doing come forcibly to him.
With a sudden explosion there were flung to the surface of his mind
from deep down where Emily was uneasily buried, a mass of memories,
longings, hopes, remnants of tenderness and love, regrets, remorse.
He had no definite impulse to recall the telegram but, as he went out
into the thronged and choked Strand, he forgot where he was and let the
crowd bump and thump and drift him into a doorway; and he stood there,
not thinking, but feeling--forlorn, acutely sensitive of the loneliness
and futility of life.
“I was just going to ask you to join me at luncheon,” said a man at his
side--Blackwell, an old acquaintance. “But if you feel as you look, I
prefer my own thoughts.”
“I was thinking of a paragraph I read in _Figaro_ this morning,” said
Marlowe. “It went on to say that the real tragedy of life is not the
fall of splendid fortunes, nor the death of those who are beloved, nor
any other of the obvious calamities, but the petty, inglorious endings
of friendships and loves that have seemed eternal.”
When Marlowe went to his lodgings after luncheon, he found Emily’s
answer: “Certainly, and I know I can trust you completely.”
He expected a note from her, but none came. He cabled for leave of
absence and in the following week sailed for New York. He “established
a residence” one morning at Petersville, an obscure county seat in
a remote corner of South Dakota, engaged a lawyer for himself and
another for Emily in the afternoon, and in the evening set out for
New York. At the end of three months, spent in New York, he returned
to his “residence”--a bedroom in Petersville. The case was called
the afternoon of his arrival. Emily “put in an appearance” through
her lawyer, and he submitted to the court a letter from her in which
she authorised him to act for her, and declared that she would never
return to her husband. After a trial which lasted a minute and
three-quarters--consumed in reading Emily’s letter and in Marlowe’s
testimony--the divorce was granted. The only publicity was the
never-read record of the Petersville court.
Marlowe reappeared in London after an absence of three months and three
weeks. When Victoria completed her tour of the provinces, they were
married and went down to the South Coast for the honeymoon.
The climax of a series of thunderclaps in revelation of Victoria as
an intimate personality came at breakfast the next morning. She was
more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and her voice had its same
searching vibrations. But he could think of neither as he watched her
“tackle”--the only word which seemed to him descriptive--three enormous
mutton chops in rapid succession. He noted each time her long white
teeth closed upon a mouthful of chop and potato; and as she chewed with
now one cheek and now the other distended and with her glorious eyes
bright like a feeding beast’s, he repeated to himself again and again:
“My God, what have I done?”--not tragically, but with a keen sense of
his own absurdity. He turned away from her and stood looking out across
the channel toward France--toward Emily.
“What shall I do?” he said to himself. “What shall I do?”
He was compelled to admit that she was not in the least to blame.
She had made no pretences to him. She had simply accepted what he
cast at her feet, what he fell on his knees to beg her to take. She
had not deceived him. Her hair, her teeth--what greedy, gluttonous
teeth!--her long, slender form, her voice, all were precisely as they
had promised. He went over their conversations. He remembered much
that she had said--brief commonplaces, phrases which revealed her, but
which he thought wonderful as they came to his entranced ears upon that
shimmering stream of sound. Not an idea! Not an intelligent thought
except those repeated--with full credit--from the conversation of
others.
“Fool! Fool!” he said to himself. “I am the most ridiculous of men. If
I tried to speak, I should certainly bray.”
He turned and looked at her as she sat with her back toward him. Her
hair was caught up loosely, coil on coil of dull gold. It just revealed
the nape of her neck above the lace of her dressing-gown. “Yes, it
is a beautiful neck! She is a beautiful woman.” Yet the thought that
that beauty was his, thrust at him like the red-hot fork of a teasing
devil. “It is what I deserve,” he said. “But that makes it the more
exasperating. What _shall_ I do?”
“Why are you so quiet, sweetheart?” she said, throwing her napkin on
the table. “Come here and kiss me and say some of those pretty things.
You Americans do have a queer accent. But you know how to make love
cleverly. No wonder you caught poor, foolish me.”
“My _wife_,” he thought. “Good God, what have I done? It must be a
ghastly dream.” But he crossed the room and sat opposite her without
looking at her. “I’m not very fit this morning,” he said.
“I thought you weren’t.” Her spell-casting voice was in the proper
stage-tone for sympathy. “I saw that you didn’t eat.”
“Eat!” He shuddered and closed his eyes to prevent her seeing the
sullen fury which blazed there. He was instantly ashamed of himself.
Only--if she _would_ avoid reminding him of the chops and potato
disappearing behind that gleaming screen of ivory. He was sitting on
a little sofa. She sat beside him and drew his head down upon her
shoulder. She let her long, cool fingers slide slowly back and forth
across his forehead.
“I _do_ love you.” There was a ring of reality in her tone beneath the
staginess. “We are going to be very, very happy. You are so different
from Englishmen. And I’m afraid you’ll weary of your stupid English
wife. I’m not a bit clever, you know, like the American women.”
He was unequal to a hypocritical protest in words, so he patted her
reassuringly on the arm. He was less depressed now that she had stopped
eating and was at her best. He rose and with ashamed self-reproach
kissed her hair. “I shall try to make you not repent your bargain,” he
said, with intent to conceal the deeper meaning of his remark. “But I
must send off some telegrams. Then we’ll go for a drive. I need the
air.”
He liked her still better as she came down in a becoming costume; he
particularly liked the agitation her appearance created in the lounging
rooms. They got through the day well, and after a dinner with two
interesting men--a dinner at which he drank far more than usual--he
felt temporarily reconciled to his fate.
But at the end of a week, in which he had so managed it that they
were alone as little as possible he had not one illusion left. He did
not love her. She did not attract him. She was tiresome through and
through. Instead of giving life a new meaning and him a new impetus,
she was an added burden, another source of irritation. He admitted to
himself that he had been tricked by his senses, as a boy of twenty
might have been. He felt like a professional detective who has yielded
to a familiar swindling game.
She had grown swiftly fonder of him, won by his mental superiority, by
his gentleness exaggerated in his anxiety not basely to make her suffer
for his folly. “He’s a real gentleman,” she thought. “His manners are
not pretence. I’ve done much better than I fancied.” And she began
further to try his nerves by a dog-like obedience. She would not put on
a dress without first consulting him. She had no will but his in any
way--except one. She insisted upon ordering her own meals. There she
did not care what he thought.
Once they were back in London, his chain became invisible and galled
him only in imagination. She had an exacting profession, and so had
he. When they were together, they would talk about her work, and, as
he was interested in it and intelligent about it and she docile and
receptive, he was content. While she was of no direct use to him, he
found that she was of great indirect use. He worked more steadily, more
ambitiously. The ideal woman, which had always been distracting and
time-wasting, ceased to have any part in his life.
He turned his attention to play-writing and play-carpentry. He
became a connoisseur of food and drink, a dabbler in old furniture
and tapestries. He did not regret the event of his first venture in
marriage and only venture in love. “As it is, it’s a perfect gem,” he
finally came to sum the matter up, “a completed work of art. If I’d had
my way, still it must have ended some time, and not so artistically
or so comfortably.” When he reflected thus, his waist-line was slowly
going.