Part 17

Her look of dazed astonishment, obviously sincere, helped me to get back my composure. I sat down again. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Even if you men have no purity yourselves, you ought to believe in it in women,” said she, with an injured air.

“Yes, indeed,” I agreed heartily. “I congratulate you on being able to make such generous allowances for masculine frailty.”

“You are sarcastic,” said she coldly.

“No matter. It certainly does not damage the title--perhaps adds to its luster.”

“It’s hereditary in their family to be wild up to marriage, and then to settle down and serve the state in some distinguished position.”

“Oh--in that case--” said I ironically.

“Margot and her husband and her children will have your money some day,” pursued she. “Why not give it to her now, when it will get her happiness?”

That impressed me. “I have not said I would not consent to this marriage,” I reminded her. “As a matter of fact, I’m in favor of it. I can see no future for Margot in America----”

“No, indeed,” cried Edna eagerly. “She simply couldn’t marry over there. She’d be wretched.”

“But I feel it is my duty-- Rather late in the day for me to talk about duty toward my daughter, after neglecting it all these years. Still, I ought to see to it that she has the best possible chance for a smooth married life. It’s only common prudence to take all precautions--isn’t it?”

“All _sensible_ precautions,” said she.

“You know how many of these foreign ‘alliances,’ as they’re called, have turned out badly.”

“They get a good many divorces in the states,” she suggested smilingly. “One to every twelve marriages, I read the other day.”

I admitted that she had made an effective retort. “The truth is,” said I, “American women aren’t brought up for domestic life. So, whether they marry at home or abroad they have trouble.”

“Men resent their independence,” said Edna.

“It may be so,” said I. Of what use to point out to her that the trouble lay in the women’s demanding to be supported and refusing to do anything to earn their support? All I said was: “I suspect a good many husbands think the marriage contract too one-sided--binding only them and not their wives. But the trouble with the ‘alliances’ can’t be that.”

“It’s because Europeans look on the wife as a kind of head servant. But Hugh isn’t that sort.”

“We’ll know more as to that when we hear what Margot says after she’s been married a few years,” said I. “The point to settle now is how to bind him to good behavior so far as it can be done in advance. He may be deeply in love with Margot. He may stay in love with her. But in the circumstances it’s wise to assume that he wants only her money and that, if he gets it, he’ll treat her badly.”

My wife’s silence was encouraging.

“If he had plenty of money he might even goad her into releasing him--and might marry again.”

My wife was obviously impressed. “Yes--that has been done,” said she. “Of course, if Margot should have an heir right away. But----”

She looked at me as if trying to decide whether she could trust me with a confidence. She evidently decided in my favor, for she went on to say:

“On the other hand--Margot is a peculiar girl. No--many women have the same peculiarity. They can’t be trusted with power over their husbands. If she had all the money in her own name and he were dependent on her-- Godfrey, I’m sure there’d be trouble.”

Once more she was astonishing me with her clear judgment in matters as to which I should have thought her hopelessly prejudiced. “But _I_ can be trusted,” said I. “The plan I had in mind was to take over the mortgages and guarantee a sufficient income.”

She shook her head. “He won’t consent,” said she. “His solicitors will insist on better terms than that.”

“Now you see why I want to talk to him directly. I don’t purpose to be hampered by that old trick of the principal hidden behind a go-between.”

“There’s no other way,” said Edna. “They’re too clever to yield that.”

“He needs money badly.”

“But he won’t marry unless he’s actually to get it,” replied she. “Almost every American who has married a daughter over here has tried to make a business bargain--at least, a bargain not altogether one-sided. Not one of them has succeeded. These Europeans have been handling the dowry and settlement question too many centuries.”

“I see,” said I affably. “If we want what they’ve got, we have to take it on their terms.”

It was most satisfactory, talking with her now that she consented to speak and listen to good sense. I was at once in a more amiable frame of mind, although I knew she had descended from her high horse only because she was shrewd enough to see it was the one way to get me to do as she wished.

“I will hide behind a go-between myself,” said I.

“Any English lawyer would simply play into the hands of the other side. At least, so Hilda was telling me.”

“Is she happy?”

“Very.”

“When’s her husband coming back?”

“Not for a year or so, I believe. Lord Blankenship cares more for big game and for exploring than for anything else.”

“An ideal marriage,” said I. “She brought him the money he wanted. He brought her the title she wanted. And they don’t annoy each other. He devotes himself to sport, she to society. These aristocratic people, with their simple, vulgar wants that are so easily gratified--how they are to be envied!”

Edna was observing me furtively, uneasily. I pretended not to notice. I went on: “Now, if they wanted the difficult things--things like love and companionship and congeniality--they might be wretched. When a child cries for a stick of candy or a tinsel-covered rattle--for money or social position--why, it’s easily pacified. But if it cries for the moon and the stars--” I laughed softly, enjoying her wonder as much as my own fancies.

After a while she said, with some constraint: “You see a great deal of Armitage?”

“We console each other,” said I, with mild raillery.

“Have you been going out much?”

“I’m very busy.”

“In one of your letters-- Those rare little notes of yours! You are cruelly neglectful, Godfrey-- In one of them you spoke of a week end or so on Armitage’s yacht. You and he don’t go off alone?”

“Oh, no. Some literary and artistic people usually are aboard.”

“I didn’t know you cared for that sort.”

“They’re interesting enough.”

“I suppose they’re friends of Mrs. Kirkwood’s,” pursued Edna. “She’s like her brother--affects to despise fashionable society. Their pretenses always amused me.”

“They are sincere people,” said I. “They don’t pretend. That’s why I like them.”

“I notice that Armitage belongs to every fashionable club in New York--and to some over here,” said Edna with a smile that was as shrewd as her observation. “Also, that he manages to find time to appear at the most exclusive parties during the season.”

I had observed this same peculiarity. While I refused to draw from it the inference she drew--and was undeniably justified in drawing--I had been tempted to do so. It irritated me to see her finger upon the weak spot in Armitage’s profession of freedom from snobbishness.

“And Mary Kirkwood,” pursued Edna, “she’s the same sort of fakir. Only, being a woman, she does it more deceptively than he.”

“She goes nowhere,” said I.

“But she revels in the fact that she _could_ go anywhere. So, she fooled you--did she?” Edna laughed merrily at my ill-concealed discomfiture. “But then you know so little about women.”

“I confess I’ve never seen in her the least sign of snobbishness or of interest in fashionable foolishness,” said I, with what I flatter myself was a fair attempt at the impartial air.

“That in itself ought to have opened your eyes,” said Edna. “Whenever you see anyone, dear, with no sign of a weakness that everybody in the world has, you may be sure you are seeing a fraud.”

“Because _you_ have a weakness, dear,” said I--as pleasant and as acid as she, “you must not imagine it is universal.”

“But _you_ have that weakness, too.”

“Really?”

“Did you or did you not join the fashionable clubs Armitage put you up at?”

I had to laugh at myself.

“Are you or are you not proud of the fact that your best friend, Armitage, is a fashionable person? Would you be as proud of him if he were only welcome in middle-class houses?”

“I’m ashamed to say there’s something in that,” said I. “Not much, but something.”

“Yet you believed Mary Kirkwood!” ended Edna.

“I thought little about it,” said I. “And I still believe that she is sincere--that she has no snobbishness in her.”

“You like her?”

“So far as I know her--yes.” My answer was an attempt to meet and parry a suspicion I felt in Edna’s mind. And it was fairly successful; fairly--for no one ever yet completely dislodged a suspicion. We cannot see into each other’s minds. We know, from what is going on in our own minds, that the human mind is capable of any vagary. Once we have applied this general principle to a specific person, once we have become definitely aware that there are in that person’s mind things of which we have no knowledge--from that time forth suspicion of them is in us, and is ready to grow, to flourish.

I had no difficulty in shifting to the subject of the marriage. “I’ll cable for my lawyer,” said I. “If anyone can beat this game, Fred Norman can.”

“Yes--send for him,” said Edna. “He is canny--and a man of _our_ world.”

“I’m going back to London to-night--” I went on.

“To-night!” she exclaimed. Her eyes filled with tears. “Godfrey--is this treating us right?”

I looked at her intently. “Don’t fake with me,” said I quietly. “It isn’t necessary.”

“What _do_ you mean?” cried she.

“I mean, I understand perfectly that you care nothing about me, except as the source of the money you need in amusing yourself. As you see in my manner, I am not wildly agitated by that fact. So far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason why we should make each other uncomfortable.”

“What _is_ the matter with you, Godfrey?” she said, with large widening eyes gazing at me. “You have changed entirely.”

“As you have,” said I, admiring her shrewdness, and afraid of it. “You’ve been educating. So have I. Mine has been slower than yours and along different lines. But it, too, has been thorough.”

She was not satisfied, though I’m confident my tone and manner betrayed nothing. Said she: “Some bad woman has been poisoning you against Margot and me.”

“As you please,” said I, too wary to be drawn into that discussion. I realized I had said entirely too much. Relying upon her intense vanity, her profound belief in her power over me, I had gone too far. “My business takes me to London to-night. I’ll probably be there until Norman arrives. Then we’ll come over.”

“Don’t you want us in London with you?” said Edna.

“You are comfortably settled here,” replied I. “Why disturb yourselves?”

She knew how to read me. She saw I was not in a dangerous mood, as she had begun to fear. She said: “We _did_ intend to stay in Paris a month or six weeks. We have a charming circle of friends among the old families here. I wish you’d stop on, Godfrey. The people are attractive, and the social life is most interesting.”

“Not to me,” said I. “You forget I’m a Hooligan. Besides, you don’t need me. There’s your advantage through being young and lovely and rich. You can get plenty of men to escort you about. It’s only the old and ugly married women who really need their husbands. Well--I’ll be ready when you are forced to fall back on me. Nothing like having in reserve a faithful Dobbin.”

She looked hurt. “How _can_ you joke about sacred things,” she reproached.

I laughed her seriousness aside. “Yes, I’ll be waiting, ready to be your companion, the confidant of your rheumatism and gout, when all the others have fled. Meanwhile, my dear, I’ll have my frisk.”

“Godfrey!”

It amused me to see how bitter to her was the taste of the medicine she had been forcing upon me so self-complacently. It amused me to watch the confusion into which these new and unsuspected aspects of myself was throwing her.

Said I: “I’m glad you’re as generous toward me as I’ve been toward you. That’s why we’ve avoided the Armitage sort of smash-up.”

When I left Paris that night I’ll engage she was thinking about me as she had never thought in her whole self-centered, American-female life.

VIII

My cable to Norman was answered the next day but one by a note from him, stopping in the same hotel. I shall not detail the negotiations that followed--the long and stormy scenes between him and Dawkins, solicitor to the Marquis of Crossley. It is sufficient to say that Norman had the novel sensation of being beaten on every point. Not outwitted, for he had wit enough and to spare for any contest of cunning; but beaten by the centuries-old precedents and customs and requirements in matters of dower and settlement. The mercenary marriage is an ancient habit of the human race; in fact, the scientists have proved that it began with marriage itself, that there was no marriage in the civilized sense until there was property to marry for. Perhaps the mercenary marriage is not so recent in America as our idyllists declare. Do we not read that the father of his country married solely for money an almost feeble-minded woman whom everybody knew he did not love? And, inasmuch as marriage is first of all a business--the business of providing for the material needs and wants of two and their children--may it not barely be possible that the unqualifiedly sentimental view of marriage can be--perhaps has been--overdone? In America, where the marriage for sentiment prevails to an extent unknown anywhere else in the world--is not the institution of marriage there in its most uneasy state? And may not that be the reason?

What a world of twaddle it is! If men and women could only learn to build their ideals on the firm foundation--the only firm foundation--of the practical instead of upon the quicksand of lies and pretenses, wouldn’t the tower climb less shakily, if more slowly, toward the stars?

You may be sure there was nothing of the stars in those talks between Norman and Dawkins--or in my talks with Norman--or in Crossley’s talks with Dawkins. Crossley had had me looked up--had discovered as much about my finances as it is possible to discover about the private business of an American. He had got the usual exaggerated estimate of my wealth, and he was resolved that he would not be cheated of a single dollar he might wring from me. From my standpoint it was obvious that he and Margot must have plenty of money or they could not be happy. All I desired was to prevent him from feeling financially free--and therefore under the aristocratic code, morally free--to show and to act, after marriage, the contempt I knew he felt for all things and persons American--except the dollars, which could be exchanged into sovereigns. I fought hard, but he stood fast. Either Margot must lose him or I must give him about what he asked--a fortune in his own right for him. If I choose I could dower her; but as to dowering him he would not permit the question of alternative to be raised.

“All right,” said I at last to Norman. “Give them their minimum.”

He was astounded, was furious--and as he is not the ordinary lick-spittle lawyer but a man of arrogant independence, he did not hesitate to let me see that his anger--and scorn--were for myself. “Do you mean that?” he said.

“Yes,” replied I carelessly--as if I were now indifferent about the whole business. “My girl wants his title. And why let a question of money come between her and happiness?”

“I can’t refrain from saying, Loring, that I’d not have believed this of you.”

“She’s not fit to live in America,” said I. “Her mother hasn’t educated her for it. American mothers don’t educate their daughters nowadays to be wives of American men. Honestly, do you know an American man able to do for himself who would be foolish enough to marry that sort of girl?”

His silence was assent.

“You see. I’ve got to buy her a husband--that is, a title--over here. This offering seems as good as there is in the market--at the price. So--why not?”

“That’s one view of it,” said he coldly.

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Come now--be sensible,” said I. “What else can I do?”

“It would be an impertinence for me to say,” replied he.

“I can guess,” said I. “You needn’t trouble yourself to say it. You evidently don’t know the circumstances. And I may add that so long as I’ve got to buy Margot a title I might as well buy her a good one.”

He eyed me sharply. But I did not take him into my confidence--nor shall I confide in you at present, gentle reader. I did not even let him see that I was holding back anything. I went on with good-humored raillery:

“I’m doing better than Hanley or Vanderveld or Pattison or any of the others who’ve dealt in these markets. For a marquis Crossley is selling cheap. He’s far from penniless, you know. It’s simply that he wants more money. Why, really, old man, it’s what’s called a love match. They always call it a love match when the nobleman isn’t absolutely on his uppers.”

“You are certainly a philosopher, Loring,” said Norman, anxious, I saw, to finish and drop the affair.

“And I became one in the usual way--necessity,” said I. “I’m as eager to have this thing dispatched as you are. I want to get out to sea, where perhaps the stench of aristocracy will blow out of my nostrils, and stay out of them till I reach the other shore. Then I’ll get it again. It blows down the bay to meet the incoming ships.”

“Yes, we’re pretty bad,” admitted Norman. “Not so bad as we used to be, but pretty bad.” He laughed. “They accuse us of loving money. Why, we are mere beginners at it. We haven’t learned how to idle or how to spend money except in crude, tiresome ways. And to love money deeply you must know how to idle and how to spend. Money’s _the_ passion with these people. How they do need it!”

Neither shall I linger over the details of the engagement and the wedding. For all that was important about either I refer you to the newspapers of London and New York. They gave everything that makes a snob’s eyes glisten and a snob’s mouth water. My wife has somewhere--she knows exactly where--a scrapbook, and my daughter has another of the same kind. Those scrapbooks are strongly bound and the pages are of the heaviest time- and wear-resisting paper. In them are pasted columns on columns of lists of titles, of descriptions of jewels and dresses, of enumerations of wedding gifts. Margot received things costing small fortunes from people she barely knew well enough to invite. They gave in the hope--the good hope--of gaining the valuable favor of the Marchioness of Crossley, a great lady by reason of her title, a greater lady by reason of the ancientness of the Massingford family, and at the top and summit of greatness by reason of her wealth.

That last item, by the way, was vastly overestimated. Everyone assumed that Crossley had sold much more dearly. No one but those intimately concerned dreamed what a bargain I had got.

You may be picturing a sordid affair, redolent of the stenches of commercialism. If you are, gentle reader, you are showing yourself unworthy of your own soulfulness, unworthy of the elegant society into which I have introduced you. I have been giving simply the plain facts--a mere skeleton upon which you, versed in society columns and society novels, and skilled in the art of hiding ugly truths under pretty lies, may readily drape the flesh and the garments of sentimentality and snobbishness. You will then have the truth as it appeared to the world--a handsome, manly groom, every inch of him the patrician; a wondrous lovely, innocent, pure young bride, looking the worthy mate of the great noble she had won with her beauty and her sweetness; a background of magnificent houses and equipages, of grand society people, of lackeys in livery without number; an atmosphere of luxury, refinement, perfumed with the fairest flowers and the most delicate artificial scents. You are seeing also the high and noble motives of all concerned--the joy of parents in a daughter sentimentally wooed and won to happiness; the generous and kindly feelings of all the friends; the lavish and affectionate overflowing of costly gifts; above all, the ecstatic young couple wrapped up in their love for each other. Flesh up and beautify the skeleton to your taste, gentle reader. You will not go amiss.

I must linger a moment on the happiness of my daughter. It was too spiritual to be of this earth. As soon as the miserable, unimportant money matters were settled, and her mother gave her full leave to love, she threw herself into it with all the ardor of the heroine of a novel. She had two diamond hearts made--at the most fashionable jewelers in Paris, you may be sure. Upon the inside of the one she kept she had engraved, under his picture, “From Hugh to Margot.” In the one she gave him there surrounded her picture in diamond inlay, “To Hugh from his dear love Margot.”

Each was to wear the heart round the neck until death. Again and again I caught her dreaming over hers, sometimes with tears in her limpid eyes. Again and again I caught her scribbling, “Margot, Marchioness of Crossley, Viscountess Brear, Countess of Felday and Noth, Baroness de Selve,” and so on through a list of titles which gentle reader will find in “Burke’s” and the “Almanach de Gotha.”

And she had a reverent way of looking at him and a tender way of touching him. Her mother, you will believe, spared neither expense nor pains in getting together the trousseau. But Margot was not satisfied. “Not nearly fine enough for _his_ bride,” she would say. “I’m _so_ afraid he’ll be disappointed.” Then the tears would spring. “Oh, mamma! If he should be disappointed in me!”

“Not so bad as if you were to be disappointed in him,” I put in with no other motive than to cheer her up.

But it only shocked her. “In Hugh!” she exclaimed, meaning in Cecil Robert Grunleigh Percival Hugh Massingford, Marquis of Crossley, etc. “_I_ disappointed in _him_! Oh, papa! You don’t _realize_!”

“No, I suppose not,” said I, getting myself away as speedily as my legs would carry me.

Through these joyous scenes of youth and love and luxury I moved gloomily--restless, bitter, tormented by self-reproaches and by thoughts of the woman I loved. What Edna had said about her, though I knew it was by way of precautionary cattishness, put into my mind the inevitable suspicion--no, not actual suspicion, but germ of suspicion--the almost harmless germ from which the most poisonous suspicions may develop. I went round and round my mental image of Mary Kirkwood. I viewed it from all angles. But I could not find a trace of the flaw Edna had asserted. I analyzed her with all the analytical skill I possessed, and that, I flatter myself, is not a little. No one who has not the faculty of analysis ever gets anywhere; no one who has that faculty ever escapes the charge of cynicism. Shallow people--the sort that make such a charge--will regard it as proof of my utter cynicism, my absolute lack of sentiment, that I was able to analyze the woman I loved, or pretended I loved. But I assure you, gentle reader, that not even love and passion suspend the habitual processes of a good mind. The reason you have read the contrary so often is because precious few writers about men of the superior sort have the capacity to comprehend the intellects they try to picture. To the man of large affairs, the average--and many a one above the average--biography or novel about a great man reads like the attempt of a straddle bug to give his fellow straddle bugs an account of an elephant.