Part 16

“I think he would have if I had encouraged him.... I liked the way he spoke of you, and”--I hesitated, could not hold back the words--“and I am not easy to please there.” Those words were certainly far from confession, were the mildest form of indiscretion. Still, so determined was I to be square, and so guilty did I feel, that they sounded like a contemptible attempt stealthily to make love to her.

“Thank you,” she said gently. And her suddenly swimming eyes and tender voice reminded me how alone she was and how bitter her experience had been and how she deserved happiness.

I felt ashamed of myself. “I hope you will be happy,” I said, perhaps rather huskily. “Anyone who tried to prevent it would deserve to be killed.”

She looked at me with such a steady, penetrating gaze that I feared I had betrayed myself. In fact, I knew I had. I glanced at my watch, put out my hand. “I hate to go,” I said, in the tone of one man to another. “But I must.” And as we shook hands, I repeated, “I know you will be happy.”

She laughed nervously; she, too, had become ill at ease. “You make me feel engaged,” she said with an attempt at mockery.

As the launch touched the shore I looked back. She was leaning on the rail, Beechman beside her. He was talking, but I felt sure she was not listening. As I looked she waved her hand. I lifted my hat and hurried away. And I learned the meaning of that word desolation.

Do not think, because I have not raved, talked of the moon and stars, poetized about my soul states, that therefore I did not love her. The banquet of life spread so richly for me seemed a ghastly mockery. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? I had lost my soul. I had discovered how I might have been happy, and at the same time I had discovered that it could never be--never. And always before me she stood in her radiant youth--intelligent, so capable, splendidly sincere--the woman I loved, the woman I felt I could have made love me.

There was my temptation--the feeling, the conviction that I could win her love. She had confessed to a friendship for me different from any she had for anyone else in the world. If I were willing to take advantage of her trust, of her liking, of her longing for love and of my knowledge of it--if I were to let her see how utterly I loved her--I could surely win her. There were times when I said to myself: “You--even as you are--can make her happier than anyone else could. She would prefer what you can give her to what she will get from Beechman. Your love gives you the right to make her happy. You are letting foolish conventional notions blind you to what is really right. If you had acted in business in that fashion, you would not have got far. Yet in the supreme crisis of your life you let yourself be frightened off by a bogy of conventional morality.”

Perhaps I was giving myself sound advice there. I do not know. I only know that I put the temptation behind me and went to work. The sentimental readers will not forgive me. So be it. I am a plain man, rather old-fashioned--prim, I believe it is called--in my ideas, not at all the ladies’ man. And I did not want to harm her. I loved her.

I went to work. The sort of people who are ever on the lookout for some excuse for going to pieces, and the world is well sprinkled with them, eagerly seize on disappointment in love as precisely what they were seeking. At the risk of being thought cold and hard, I will say that it is extremely fortunate for Joan that she escaped the Darby who goes smash for disappointed love of her. If Joan had yielded to him, Darby would simply have been put to the trouble of finding another pretext for throwing up his job and taking to drink. I confess it did not occur to me to give up and fall to boozing and brooding. I should not have dared do that; for, you see, I was really in love--not with myself, but with Mary Kirkwood. I went to work. I filled my days and my evenings with business engagements that compelled both my time and my thought. I took on an extra secretary. I started to build a railway. I laid out an addition to the manufacturing city I had founded. I organized a farm for teaching city slum boys to be farmers. I engaged in several entirely new mining and manufacturing enterprises. The result was that when I went to bed, I slept; and when they awakened me in the morning my brain was at work before my head was well off the pillow. And still-- You can distract your mind from the aching tooth, but it aches on.

All this time I was receiving weekly letters from Edna and Margot--long and loving letters. I read them, and you may possibly imagine I was filled with shame and remorse. Not at all. My wife and my daughter had rather exaggerated my vanity. Only vanity could gull a husband and father in my position into fancying himself the object of such luxuriant affection as those letters professed. If you have lies to tell, take my advice and don’t _write_ them. I can’t explain the mystery, but a lie which, spoken and heard, passes out and passes in as smoothly as a greased shuttle in its greased groove, becomes a glaring falsehood when set down in black and white. The only effect of those letters upon me was to make my sick heart the sadder with the realization of what I had missed in losing Mary Kirkwood.

And I kept wondering what it was that Edna and Margot were slathering me for.

* * * * *

In September I got the key to the mystery. The necessity of floating some bonds took me abroad again. I found my family ensconced in beautiful luxury in an apartment in Paris. You drove out the Champs Elysées. Not far from the President’s palace you drove in at great doors--not gates, but doors--in a plain, unpretentious-looking house wall. You were in a superb garden of whose existence you had no hint from the street. Magnificent bronze inner doors--powdered and velveted lackeys--a majestic stairway leading to lofty and gorgeous corridors and salons. Really my wife, with the aid of those clever European professors of the aristocratic art, had educated herself amazingly. On every side there were evidences of her good taste in furniture, in tapestries, in wall coverings, in pictures. It was not the taste of a home maker, but it was unquestionably good taste. It was not the sort of taste I liked, but not to admire it would have been to lack the sense of harmony in line and color. And let me add in justice to her, it was her own taste. There is no mistaking the difference between the luxury that is merely bought and the luxury that is created.

I submitted with what grace I could muster to the exuberant hypocrisies of that greeting. But I got to business with all speed. “In the note I found in London you said you had a surprise for me,” I said to Edna. “What is it?”

“How impatient you are,” laughed she. “Just like a child.”

Whether because the fashions of the day happened to be peculiarly becoming or because she had actually improved, she now had the loveliness more exquisite than I had ever seen in woman. No doubt her piquant face had charm for most people; for me it had none whatever. I knew too well what lay beneath--or, rather, what was not there, for like most human beings her defects of character were not so much the presence of the vices as the lack of the virtues.

“I’ve been waiting for that surprise several months,” said I. “Your letters and Margot’s showed that some shock was coming.”

“Shock? No, indeed!” And she and Margot laughed gayly. “It isn’t altogether a surprise,” she went on. “Can’t you guess?”

I looked at Margot. “Ah!” I said. “Margot is engaged.”

Margot ran across the room and kissed me. “Oh, I’m so happy, papa!” she cried.

“Is it the duke?” I asked.

She made a wry face. “He was horrid!” she said. “I couldn’t _endure_ him.”

“So you had to fall back on the marquis?”

Neither of the women liked this way of putting the matter. It suggested that I knew the painful truth of the failure of the ducal campaign. But they were not to be put out of humor. “You liked him yourself, papa,” said Margot.

I was abstractedly thinking how I had no sense of her being my daughter or of Edna being my wife. You would say that after all we three had been through together, from Passaic up, it would be a sheer impossibility for there ever to be a sense of strangeness between us. But there is no limit to the power of the human soul to cut itself off; intimacy is hard to maintain, isolation--alas--is the natural state. I looked on them as strangers; I could feel that, in spite of their clever, resolute forcing, in spite of the hypocrisy of love for me which each doubtless maintained at all times with the other, still they could scarcely hide their feeling that I was a strange man come in from the street.

“Yes, I liked Crossley,” said I. “I think he’ll make you a good husband.”

“He is _mad_ about her!” said Edna. “There was a while this summer when he thought he had lost her, and he all but went out of his mind.”

To look at her was to believe it; for, a lovelier girl was never displayed in all her physical perfection by a more discriminating mother.

“When is the wedding to be?” said I.

There was a brief, surcharged silence--no more than a pause. Then Edna said indifferently, “As soon as the settlements are arranged.”

“Oh--is he settling something on her?” said I, with pretended innocence. “I’m glad of that. There’s been too much of the other sort of thing.”

Margot came to the rescue with a charming laugh. “Poor Hugh!” she said. “He hasn’t anything but mortgages.”

“Um--I see,” said I glumly--and I observed intense anxiety behind the smiles in those two pairs of beautiful eyes. “How much have we got to pay for him?”

Edna looked reproachfully at me. “Margot,” said she, “you’d better go tell them to serve lunch in fifteen minutes.”

“Nonsense,” said I cheerfully. “Let her stay. What’s the use of this hypocrisy? She knows he cares no more about her than she cares about him--that it’s simply a matter of buying and selling. If she doesn’t know it, if she’s letting her vanity bamboozle her----”

“Godfrey--please!” implored Edna. “Don’t smirch the child’s romance. She and Hugh love each other. If she were poor, he’d marry her just the same.”

“Has he offered to go ahead, regardless of settlements?” I asked.

“Of course not, papa,” flashed Margot. “Things aren’t done that way over here.”

“Oh, yes, they are,” replied I. “Romantic love matches occur every day. Even royalty throws up its rights, to marry a chorus girl. But when there’s a fat American goose to pluck and eat, why, they pluck and eat it. I’m the goose, my dear--not you.”

“You don’t understand,” murmured Margot.

“I wish I didn’t,” said I. “And I wish you didn’t have to understand. If possible I want to arrange matters with him so that he’ll always treat you decently.”

“But, Godfrey,” cried Edna in a panic, “you can’t talk money to _him_.”

“Why not?” said I. “He’s _thinking_ money. Why shouldn’t he talk it?”

“He knows nothing about those things, papa----”

I laughed.

“You’ll ruin everything!” cried my wife. “You’ll make us the laughingstock of Europe!”

“We Americans of the rich class are that already,” replied I.

Edna must have given her daughter some secret signal, for she abruptly and hastily left the room, closing the door behind her. I shrugged my shoulders, settled back on the exquisitely upholstered and carved sofa on which I had seated myself. Looking round I said, “This is a beautiful room. You’ve certainly arranged a fitting background for yourself and Margot.”

But she was not listening. She was watching her fingers slowly twist and untwist the delicate little lace handkerchief. At last she said: “Godfrey, I’ve never asked a favor of you. I’ve given my whole life to advancing your interests--to making our child a perfect lady--and to placing her in a dazzling position.”

“Yes,” said I. “You have worked hard--and you’ve made your tricks.”

“I’ve played my hand well--as you have yours,” said she, accepting my rather unrefined figure with good grace. “I began to make Margot’s career before she was born. The first time I saw her little face, I murmured to myself, ‘Little Duchess.’ Now, you understand why I brought her up so carefully.”

“Oh,” said I, looking at her with new interest. “That was it?” I who knew what a futile, purposeless, easily discouraged breed the human race is could not but admire this woman. If her intelligence had only been equal to her will, what might she not have accomplished!

“I have never lost sight of it for a moment,” said she. “In the early days--for a time--when we were seemingly so hopelessly obscure, and I was too ignorant to learn which way to turn--for a while I was discouraged. But I never gave up--never! And step by step I’ve trained her for the grand position as a leader of European society she was one day to occupy--for, I knew that if she led Europe she would be leader at home, too. Over there they’re merely a feeble, crude echo of Europe.”

“Socially,” said I.

“That’s all we’re talking about,” replied she. “That’s all there is worth talking about. What else have you been piling up money for?... What else?”

I could think of no reply. I was silent. What else, indeed?

“I kept her away from other children,” Edna went on. “After she could talk I never trusted her to nurses until we could afford fashionable servants. I got her the right sort of governesses--so that she should speak French, Italian, and German, and should have a well-bred English accent for her own language. I even trained her in the children’s stories she read--had her read only the fairy tales and the other stories that would fill her mind with ideas of nobility and titles and the high things of life.”

“The high things of life,” said I.

She made an impressive gesture--she looked like a beautiful young empress. “Let’s not cant,” said she. “Those _are_ the high things of life. Ask any person you meet in America--young or old, high or low--ask him which he’d rather be--a prince, duke, marquis, or a saint, scientist, statesman. What would he answer?”

I laughed. “That he’d rather be a millionaire,” said I.

“A millionaire with a title--with established social position at the very top--that couldn’t be taken away. That’s the truth, Godfrey.”

“I’ll not contradict you,” said I.

“And,” she went on, “I’ve brought up our daughter so that she could realize the highest ambition within our reach. Haven’t I brought her up well?”

“Perfectly, for the purpose,” said I.

“When we came over here, I examined the ground carefully. I was at first inclined to one of the big Continental titles. They are much older, much more high sounding than the English titles--and so far as birth goes they mean something, while the English titles mean really nothing at all. The English aristocracy isn’t an aristocracy of birth.”

“That’s, no doubt, the reason why it still has some say in affairs,” said I.

“Its talk about birth is almost entirely sham,” proceeded she, not interested in my irrelevant comment. “But I found that it was the most substantial aristocracy, the only one that was respected everywhere, just as the English money circulates everywhere. And it’s the only one that makes much of an impression at home. We are so ignorant that we think England is all that it pretends to be--the powerful part of Europe. Of course, it isn’t, but--no matter. I decided for an English title.”

“And Margot?”

“I have brought her up to respect my judgment,” said Edna.

“I wonder what will become of her,” said I, reflectively, “when she hasn’t you at her elbow to tell her what to do.... But why a marquis? Why not a duke?”

She smiled, blushed a little. “The only duke we could have got--and he was a nice young fellow--but he was in love with an English girl of wealth--and he wanted too much to change to an American. Is that frank enough to suit you?”

“If you’d only keep to that key,” said I.

“He wanted double the American dowry that he was willing to take with an English girl.”

“His being in love with another girl might have made it unpleasant for Margot,” I suggested.

“That wouldn’t have amounted to anything,” replied she. “Over here the right sort of people bring up their children as I brought up Margot--to give their hearts where their hands should go. They are not shallow and selfish. They think of the family dignity and honor before they think of their personal feelings.”

“That’s interesting--and new--at least to me,” said I.

“You have been judging these things without knowing, Godfrey,” said she. “You have attacked me for narrowness, when in fact you were the narrow one.”

“Yes? What next?” said I.

“I found that the Massingfords--that’s the family name of the Marquis of Crossley--I found they ranked higher as a family than any of the ducal families except one. Of course I don’t include the royal dukes.”

“Of course not,” said I gravely.

“I might possibly have got one of the royal dukes--if not in England, then here on the Continent. But I decided-- You see, Godfrey, I looked into everything.”

“You certainly have been thorough,” said I. “I should have said it was impossible in so short a time.”

“But it wasn’t difficult. All the Americans over here are well informed about these things.”

“I can readily believe it,” said I. “But why did you turn down the poor royal dukes?”

“Because the other women would have made it dreadfully uncomfortable for Margot. They’d have hated her for taking precedence over them by such a long distance. Then, too--the dowry. I was afraid you couldn’t afford the dowry--or wouldn’t think the title worth the money. Indeed, I didn’t think so, myself.”

“A royal duke comes high?”

“The least dowry would be seventy-five million francs.”

“Fifteen million dollars!” I exclaimed. “Whew!”

“Mrs. Sinkers tried to get one for her daughter for ten millions--all she could scrape together. They agreed to a morganatic marriage for that, but not a full marriage. So, she and poor Martha gave it up. Martha’s heart is broken. The duke made love to her so wonderfully. I can’t imagine what Mrs. Sinkers was about, to allow such a thing before the affair was settled. Poor Martha was so excited that she would have accepted the morganatic marriage--she ranking merely as the duke’s head mistress. But while he was willing to take other mistresses for nothing, and even to pay them, he wouldn’t take _her_ for less than fifty million francs.”

“Poor Martha!” said I.

“I was too wise to trifle with royal dukes,” pursued Edna, so interested in her own narrative and so eager to show how sagacious she had been that she forgot her pose and her doubts as to my sympathies. “I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of about a dozen eligible men. Only three stood the test, and it finally narrowed down to Crossley. Margot was so happy when I told her. She wanted to love him--and now she is loving him.”

A long pause while Edna calmed down to earth from her European soarings, and while I, too, returned to the normal from an excursion in the opposite direction. “How much does he want?” said I. “Let’s get to bed rock.”

“He loves her so that he is willing, so I hear-- Of course, nothing has been said-- You will not believe how refined and----”

“How much?” interrupted I.

Edna winced at my rudeness, then again presented an unruffled front of happy loving serenity. “Enough to pay off the mortgages and to provide them with a suitable income.”

“How much?” I persisted, laughing.

She looked tenderly remonstrant. “I don’t know, Godfrey----”

“You know _about_ how much. What’s the figure--the price of this marked down marquis?”

“I should say the whole thing would not cost more than three or four million dollars.”

“Three--or four.” I laughed aloud. “Not much difference there. Now which is it--three or four?”

“Perhaps nearer four. Margot must have a _good_ income.”

“To be sure,” said I.

“The whole object would be defeated if she hadn’t the means----”

“The money,” I suggested. “Why use these evasive words? We’re talking a plain subject. Let’s use its language.”

“The money, then,” acquiesced she, resolutely good-humored. “If she hadn’t the money to make a proper appearance.”

“Naturally, to lead in society you must lead in spending money.... Well--it can’t be done.”

She paled, half started from her chair, sank back again. There was a long silence. Then she said, “You have never been cruel, Godfrey. You won’t be cruel now. You won’t destroy my life work. You won’t shatter Margot’s happiness.”

“The whole thing is--is nauseating to me,” said I.

Her short, pretty upper lip quivered. Her eyes filled. “If you didn’t approve, dear, why didn’t you stop me long ago? Why did you let me go on until there was no turning back?”

I was silent. There seemed to be no answer to that.

“Did you do it purposely, Godfrey?” said she, with melancholy eyes upon me. “Did you lure us on, so that you could crush us at one stroke?”

I was silent.

“I can’t believe that of you. I won’t believe it until you compel me to.”

“As I understand it,” said I, “you propose that I hand over to this young man four million----”

“Only about half of it, Godfrey,” cried she, reviving. “The other half would be Margot’s--for her own income.”

“Then that I hand over to this amiable, insignificant young foreigner two million dollars to induce him to consent to the degradation of marrying my daughter--to have him going about, saying in effect, ‘It is true, she is only one of those low Americans, but don’t forget that I got two million dollars for stooping.’ Is that the proposition?”

“You know it isn’t!” cried she. “He doesn’t feel that he is degrading himself. He feels proud of winning her--the most beautiful, the best mannered girl in London. But it’d be simply impossible for them to marry without the money. _I_ shouldn’t want it. They would be wretched. You talk like a sentimental schoolboy, Godfrey. How could two refined, sensitive people such as Hugh and Margot, used to every luxury, used to being foremost in society--how could they be happy without the means----”

“The money,” I corrected blandly.

“Without the money needed to maintain their position as marquis and marchioness of Crossley?”

I nodded assent.

“He has only about five thousand--twenty-five thousand of our money--a year. That is ridiculous for a marquis. He has to keep all his houses closed and run as economically as possible. Even then they cost him nearly seventy-five thousand dollars a year to maintain.”

“And he has only twenty-five thousand!”

“I meant twenty-five thousand over and above. He has that to live on. And, poor fellow, he is dropping every year deeper and deeper into debt. So much is expected of a marquis.”

“But not honesty, apparently,” said I.

“You mustn’t judge these people by our commercial standards,” she gently rebuked.

“I forgot,” said I penitently.

“And the poor fellow does love Margot so!”

“Um,” said I. “Have you ever happened to hear of a Miss Townley--Jupey Townley?”

A flash of annoyance flitted over Edna’s lovely, delicate countenance.

“I see you have,” said I. “You were, indeed, thorough. Permit me to compliment you, my dear.”

“I am glad Hugh hasn’t been a saint.”

“Isn’t,” said I.

“That’s all in the past,” declared she.

“I saw them in a box at a London music hall night before last,” said I. “They were-- They had been drinking.”

But Edna was not daunted. “You are a man of the world, Godfrey. Don’t pretend to be narrow.”

“When a man loves a woman----”

“Love is very different from that sort of thing, and you know it.”

“Has Margot heard----”

“Godfrey!” cried Edna, in horror. “Do you think I would permit _my_ daughter--_our_ daughter--to know such things! Why, her mind is as pure----”

I could not restrain a gesture of disgust. “You women!” I cried, rising. “Pure! Pure--God in Heaven, pure!”