Part 26

“What’s luck? Nothing but shrewd calculation. The fellow who can’t calculate soon loses any windfalls that may happen to blunder his way. But what’s the grouch now?”

I was so helplessly befogged that I resolved to tell him.

“My late wife is threatening not to release me,” said I.

He smiled curiously. “But she hasn’t done it yet?”

“Not yet,” replied I. “At least not up to eleven o’clock this morning, New York time.”

“I don’t think she will,” said he.

“Why?” demanded I.

“You won’t let her, for one reason,” replied he.

“You’re as fond of your freedom as I am. And nothing on earth could induce me to marry again. When women--English women--look at me I see them fairly twitching to get me where they can make free use of me. Yes--marriage has gone the way of everything else. Business--finance--politics--religion--they’ve all degenerated into so many means of graft. And art’s going the same way. And marriage--it’s the woman’s great and only graft. Our women look at marriage in two ways--how much can be got out of it, living with the man; how much will it net as alimony.”

“You seemed rather positive that my late wife would not hold on to me?” persisted I.

He eyed me sharply. “You really wish to be free?”

“I am determined to be free.”

“She’s a charming--a lovely woman,” said he.

There was doubt of my candor in his eyes. It is all but impossible for a man rightly to judge any woman except her he has tired of or for some other reason does not want and cannot imagine himself wanting. The unpossessed woman has but the one value; the possessed woman must have other values--or she has none. Armitage could judge Edna only as female, unpossessed female. Said he:

“She’s a charming--a lovely woman.”

“Like the former Mrs. Armitage,” I reminded him.

“So--so,” conceded he. “But I’ve always believed you were a fond husband at bottom.”

“Dismiss it from your mind,” said I. “You are hesitating about telling me something. Say it!”

With a certain nervousness he yielded to his love of gossip. “Prince Frascatoni--you know him?”

I beamed in a reassuring smile. “My late wife’s chief admirer,” said I. “A fine fellow. I like him.”

“He’s visiting down at--what’s the name of the place your son-in-law has taken?”

“He is?” exclaimed I jubilantly. “When did he go?”

“About a week, I hear.”

“That looks encouraging, doesn’t it?” cried I.

“It certainly does,” said he. “They say he was charging round town like a lunatic up to a few weeks ago----”

“Two weeks ago,” said I.

“But now he has calmed again--looks serene. I had a note from him this morning. I’m positive he’s content with the way the cards are falling.”

The change in me was so radical that Armitage must have been convinced--for the moment. “If I only knew!” said I.

“I can find out for you,” suggested he. “Your daughter has asked me down for the week end. I’ll sacrifice myself, if you wish.”

“I’ll take your going as a special favor,” said I.

“Besides,” he went on, “these Anglo-American menages interest me. American women are so brash with the men of their own country. I like to see them playing the part of meek upper servants. The only kind of wife to have is a grateful one. To get a grateful wife an American has to marry some poor creature, homely, neglected by everyone till he came along. Even then the odds are two to one she’ll go crazy about herself and despise him--because he stooped to her, if she can’t find any other excuse. But a titled foreigner-- An American girl is on her knees at once and stays there. He can abuse her--step on her--kill her almost--neglect her--waste her money. She is still humbly grateful.”

“The worms have been known to turn,” protested I. For, while I could not deny the general truth of Armitage’s attack I felt he was whipped too far by bitterness that he, for lack of a title, could not command what these inferior men with titles had offered to them without the bother of asking.

“Not a worm,” declared he. “No American woman ever divorced a title unless she was either in terror of her life or in terror of being robbed to the last penny and kicked out.”

“Thank God all our women aren’t title crazy,” said I.

“How do you know they aren’t?” retorted he. “Do you know one who has been tempted and has resisted?”

I had to confess I did not.

“Then you thanked God too soon. The truth is our women are brought up to be snobs, spenders--useless, vain parasites. Their systems are all ready to be infected with the title mania.”

Armitage, on his favorite subject, talked and talked. I did not listen attentively--not so much because I did not like what he was saying or because I thought him prejudiced as because I knew him to be a secret snob of the thoroughgoing variety. I suspected that if things were reversed, if he could get a title by marriage and a position that would enable him to swagger and would make everyone bow and scrape, he would put the eagerest of the female title-hunters to the blush. It may be just and proper to criticise women for being what they are. But let us also hear in mind that it is not their fault but the fault of their training; also that the men do no better when they have the chance to live in idle vanity upon the labors of some one else.

On the following Monday my emissary returned from Garton Hall full to the brim with news.

But first he had again to assure himself that there was no pretense in my seeming anxiety to be free. I saw doubt of me in his eyes before he began his adroit cross-examination. I gave no sign that I knew what he was about; for in those cases the one chance of convincing is to submit to whatever tests may be applied. It was not unnatural that he should doubt, coming as he did direct from seeing and talking with the charming Edna. Men are habitually fools about women--not because women make fools of them but because they enjoy the sensation of making fools of themselves. That is a sensation much praised by poets, romancers, sentimentalists of all kinds; and because of this praise it has come to have a certain fictitious value, has come to be a cheap way for a man to imagine himself a devil of a fellow, a figure of romantic recklessness. There is no limit to which the passion for living up to a pose will not carry a man. Men have flung away their fortunes, their lives, for the sake of a pose; martyrs have burned at the stake for pose. So a man of experience even more than your ordinary brick-brained citizen is distrustful of his fellow men where women are concerned. And it is nothing against Armitage’s intelligence, nor any sign of his having a low estimate of my strength of mind, that he tried to make absolutely sure of me before proceeding.

Then, too, there was Edna’s charm. Women--I mean, our fashionable and would-be fashionable American women of all classes, from Fifth Avenue to the Bowery, from Maine to the Pacific--women are parlor-bred--are bred to make an imposing surface impression. The best of them fool the most expert man, as Edna had been fooling Armitage during those two days down in the country. A man has to live with them to find them out. And often, our men, being extremely busy and kindly disposed toward their women and unobservant of them and uncritical of them, do not find them out for many years. The house is run badly, the money is wasted, the children are not brought up right. But the man lets it pass as “part of the game.” He tells himself that not much but good looks is to be expected of a woman; he buries himself still deeper in his business. Then-- If he is a successful man, along about forty when he has got up high enough to be able to relax from the labor of his career and thinks of enjoying himself, he tries to form an alliance for pleasure with his wife. And lo and behold, he discovers that he is married to a vain, superficial fool.

There could have been no more delightful experience than passing a few days in the society of Edna. She had educated herself, admirably, thoroughly, for show. She could have fooled the fashionable man his whole life through, for one cannot see beyond the range of his own vision. She might have fooled many a serious man of the narrow type; an excellent shoemaker might easily be misled by a clever showy jack of all trades into thinking him a master of all trades so long as he avoided betraying his ignorance of shoemaking. But your successful American man of the highest type, having a broad range of practical interests, becomes a shrewd judge of human values. Thus, the American woman who can pass for brilliant in fashionable society at home or abroad cannot deceive the American man--for long. Not when he lives with her. No wonder she finds him coarse; who does not wince when vanity is stepped on or ignored? No wonder she thinks him uninteresting. A child would have an equally poor opinion of any person inexpert at catcher, marbles, and mud pies.

Armitage, in a company of titled people, his nostrils full of his beloved, stealthily enjoyed perfumes of wealth and rank, was captivated by Edna. If he had stopped a week or so, his American shrewdness might have found her out, might have seen why I could view with unruffled sleeves, as the Chinese say, the loss of so lovely and lively a companion. But, stopping only for the week end, he became doubtful of my sincerity. I measured how deeply he had been deluded when he spoke of her keen sense of humor. Woman nature is too practical, too matter of fact for even the cleverest of them to have a real sense of humor--with now and then an exception, of course. Edna had not a glimmer of appreciation of either wit or humor. But only I, before whom she dropped all pretenses except those that were essential to her pose--only I knew this. Before the rest of the world, with the aid of her vivacity!--What an aid to women is vivacity!--how many of them it marries well!--With the aid of her vivacity she made a convincing show not only of appreciating humor and wit but also of having much of both. At precisely the right place she gave the proper, convincing, charming exhibition of dancing eyes and pearl-white teeth. And occasionally with a pretty liveliness she repeated as her own some witticism she had heard much applauded in another and remote company. But I do not blame you, ladies, for your inveterate and incessant posing. We men are determined to idealize and to be gulled, and you need us to pay for your luxury and your finery.

I let Armitage probe on and on until my impatience for his news would suffer no further delay. I said:

“I see you refuse to be convinced. So let it go at that, and tell me what you found out. Is she to marry Frascatoni?”

“As I’ve been telling you, I believe she is in love with you, Loring.”

“But is she going to free me?”

“Unless you do something pretty soon, I’m afraid you’ll lose her.”

It was too absurd that he, who had lived with one of these showy vivacious women, had found her out and had rid himself of her should be thus taken in by another of precisely the same kind. But that’s the way it is with men. They understand why they yawn at their own show piece; but they can’t appreciate that all show pieces in time produce the same effect.

“There still remain three weeks before the day on which her lawyers must ask the judge to confirm the decree,” said I. “Do you think she will have them do it or not?”

“Unless you get busy, old man----”

“But I shall not get busy. I shall do everything I can to encourage her to stay free.”

“Then you’ll lose her,” said he. “Frascatoni is mad about her, and he knows how to make an impression on a woman. It irritated me to see a damned dago carrying off such a prize--and you know I’m not prejudiced in favor of American women.”

“I want to see her happy,” said I. “She will be happy with him--so, I hope he gets her.” I laughed mockingly. “She wouldn’t be happy with an American, Bob--not even with you.”

He colored guiltily. “That idea never entered my head,” protested he.

But I laughed the more. “And she wouldn’t have you, Bob,” I went on. “So, don’t put yourself in the way of being made uncomfortable.”

He had enjoyed himself hugely. Not only was my former wife most entertaining, but also Margot. She had, beyond question, been beautifully educated for the part she was to take in life. Her manner--so Armitage assured me--was the perfection of gracious simplicity--the most exquisite exhibition of the perfect lady--“note how ladylike I am, yet how I treat you as if you were my equal.” Gracious--there’s the word that expresses the whole thing. And she had a quantity of bright parlor tricks--French recitation, a little ladylike singing in a pleasant plaintive soprano that gave people an excuse for saying: “She could have been a grand-opera star if she had cared to go in seriously for that sort of thing.” Also, a graceful skirt dance and a killing cake walk. She had an effective line of fashionable conversation, too--about books and pictures, analysis of soul states, mystic love theories--all the paraphernalia of a first-class heroine of a first-class society novel. And you, gentle reader, who know nothing, would never have dreamed that she knew nothing. You who are futile would not have seen how worthless she was--except to do skirt dances well enough for a drawing-room or to talk soul states well enough for a society novel.

The more Armitage discoursed of the delights of his little visit the more nervous I became lest Edna should again change her mind and inflict me further. What he had said brought back my life with her in stinging vividness. I lived again the days of my self-deception, the darker days of my slow awakening, the black days of my full realization of the mess my life was, and of my feeling that there was no escape for me.

“I will admit, Loring,” said Armitage, “that as women go our women are the best of all.”

“Yes,” I assented, sincerely. “And they ought to be. America is the best place to grow men. Why shouldn’t it be the best place to grow women?”

He did not pursue the subject. In his heart he disagreed with me, for he was wholly out of conceit with everything American. His pose had been the other way, and he shrank from uncovering himself.

A day or so later I was crossing Green Park when I ran straight into Hartley Beechman. I smiled pleasantly, though not too cordially. He planted himself in front of me and stared with a tragic frown. I then noted that he verged on the unkempt, that he had skipped his morning shave and perhaps his bath. His stare was unmistakably offensive--the look of a man who is seeking a quarrel.

“How’re you, Beechman?” said I, ignoring the signs of foul weather. “Armitage told me you were in town, but didn’t know your address. Stopping long?”

“You are a scoundrel,” said he.

I shrugged my shoulders. As I was much the larger and stronger man I could afford to do it. “So I’ve often heard,” said I. “Perhaps it’s true. What of it? Why should you think I cared to know your opinion of me?”

“If I send you a challenge will you accept it?”

I laughed. “No, I never pay the slightest attention to crank letters.”

“You are a coward. You will not give me a chance to meet you on equal terms.”

“I’ll take you over my knee and give you a spanking if you don’t behave yourself,” said I, and I pushed him out of my path and was passing on.

“You took her away from me,” he jeered. “But it will do you no good. She is laughing at us both.”

I strode away. I had heard enough to put me in high good humor.

* * * * *

As the end of my wait upon the anxious seat drew into its last week, I fell into a state of deep depression. Too much eating and drinking was, of course, the cause. But I had to pass the time somehow; and what is there to do in London but eat and drink?

Four days before the last, Rossiter came into my sitting room with the news that Edna was calling. There arose a nice question: Would I better send word I was out or see her? Because of my knowledge of her persistence where her interest was really engaged, I decided to see her and have done with. So in she came, vivacious, radiant--dressed for a scene in which she was to be heroine, as I saw at a glance.

“Pray don’t think I’m going to repeat what I did the other day,” cried she by way of beginning. “I’m in quite another mood.”

“So I see,” said I.

“I was horribly ashamed and disgusted with myself afterwards,” she went on. “You must have thought me crazy. In fact, you did. You treated me as if I were.”

“Won’t you sit?” said I, arranging a chair for her.

She smiled mischievously at me as she seated herself. “You do know something about women,” said she. “You put this chair so that my face would be spared the strong light.” As she said this, she turned into the full strength of the light a face as free as a girl’s from wrinkles or any other sign of years. “You certainly do know something about women.”

“Very little,” said I, for it was not a time to pause and poke a finger into the swelling bubble of woman’s baffling complexity and unfathomable mystery. “You’ve come to tell me what it was you wanted the other day?”

She shook her head. She was wearing a charming hat--but her costumes were never indifferent and nearly always charming--a feat the more remarkable because she, being a timidly conventional woman, followed the fashions and ventured cautiously and never far in individual style. “You’re usually right, my dear,” said she, “in your guesses at people’s underlying motives. But you were mistaken that time. I wanted exactly what I said. I wanted _you_.”

“Incredible,” laughed I.

“Yes--it does sound so,” conceded she. “But it’s the truth. I had a queer attack--an attack of jealousy. I’d often heard of that sort of thing. I fancied myself above it. Perhaps that was why I fell such a foolish victim. But I’ve recovered completely.” And her eyes were mocking me as if she had a secret joke on me.

“It couldn’t last long,” said I, to be saying something.

“No, perhaps not,” replied she. “At any rate, as soon as I heard of Mary Kirkwood’s engagement I was cured--instantly cured.”

“I told you she was engaged,” said I.

“Oh, I don’t mean that Beechman person,” scoffed Edna. “She was simply amusing herself with him. A woman--a woman of our world--might have an affair with a man of that sort--as you men sometimes do with queer women. But she wouldn’t think of _marrying_ him. Marriage is a serious matter.”

“Yes, indeed,” said I.

“It’s a woman’s whole career,” pursued she. “It means not only her position, but the position of her children, too.”

“Very serious,” said I.

“No--I mean Mary’s engagement to Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt.”

“I hadn’t heard of it,” said I indifferently. There could be nothing in such a silly story.

“Didn’t Bob Armitage tell you?”

“Not yet,” said I. “But why should he?”

“That’s queer,” mused she. “Perhaps he thought there might be a little something in the talk about you and Mary, and that it would be well not to stir things up.”

“That might account for it,” I agreed.

She was studying me closely. “I believe you really didn’t care about Mary,” continued she. “I confess I was astonished when I first heard that you did. She’s--” Edna laughed--“hardly up to _me_.”

“Hardly,” said I.

“But let’s not talk of her. I’ve forgotten all that. I’ve come to make a last proposal to you.”

She was smiling, but I detected seriousness in her eyes, in her unsteady upper lip, in her hands trying not to move restlessly.

“You don’t realize what a strong hold you have on me, Godfrey. Is it love? Is it habit? I don’t know. But I can’t shake it off. Don’t you think me strange, talking to you in this way?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” said I.

“It’s more like a woman who isn’t attractive to men.”

“On the contrary,” said I. “You speak like a woman accustomed to deal with men according to her own good pleasure.”

“How shrewd that is!” said she, with an admiring glance. “How shrewd you are! That’s what I miss in other men--in these men over here who have so much that I admire. But they--well, they give me the feeling that they are superficial. Do you think _I_ am superficial?”

“How could I?” said I.

“That’s an evasion,” laughed she. “You _do_ think so. And perhaps I am. A woman ought to be. A man looks after the serious side of life. The woman’s side is the lighter and graceful side--don’t you think so?”

“That sounds plausible,” said I.

“But I grow tired of superficial men. They give me the feeling that--well, that they couldn’t be relied on. And you are reliable, Godfrey. I feel about you that no matter what happened you’d be equal to it. And that’s why I don’t want to give you up.”

I sat with my eyes down, as if I were listening and reflecting.

“Since you’ve been over here long enough to--to broaden a little-- You don’t mind my saying you’ve broadened?”

“It’s true,” said I.

“I’ve fancied perhaps you might be seeing that I wasn’t altogether wrong in my ideas?”

“Yes?” said I, as she hesitated.

“Margot was telling me about some plans you had--for living on the other side. You weren’t in earnest?”

I looked at her gravely. “Very much in earnest,” said I. “I shall never again, in any circumstances, live as we used to live.”

She sank back in her chair, slowly turned her parasol round and round. “Then--it’s hopeless,” said she, with a sigh that was a sob also. And the look in the eyes she lifted to mine went straight to my heart. “I simply can’t stand America,” said she. “It reminds me of--” She rose impatiently. “If you only knew, Godfrey, how I _loathe_ my origin--the dreadful depth we came from--the commonness of it.” She shuddered.

“Europe is the place for you,” said I.

“Yes, it is,” cried she. “And we could be happy over here--if you’d only see it in the right light. Godfrey, I don’t want to--to change. Won’t you compromise?”

“By conceding everything?” said I good-humoredly. “By becoming the bedraggled tail to your gay and giddy kite?”

“You simply won’t reason about these things!” exclaimed she. “Yet they say men are reasonable!”

“My dear Edna, I don’t ask you to make yourself wretched for _my_ sake. And I don’t purpose to be wretched for _your_ sake.”

She sat down again. The brightness had faded from her. She looked older than I’d have believed she could. “Well--I see it’s useless,” she said finally. “And as I’ve got to stay over here, I simply must marry again. You understand that?”

“Perfectly,” said I.

“Don’t you care the least bit?” said she wistfully.

“You wish me to be unhappy about it,” laughed I, “to gratify your vanity.”

She sighed again.

“You are content with the settlements?”

“Oh, yes,” said she wearily.

No doubt you, gentle reader, are now completely won over to her and think that the least I could in decency have done would have been to insist on her accepting half my fortune. I had no impulse toward that folly. There is a kind of wife who can justly claim that she is the equal partner in her husband’s wealth. But not the Edna kind. I had made my fortune in spite of her. Nor was I keen to give her any more money than I should be compelled; why turn over wealth to her to fritter away and to bolster the pretensions of a family of worthless Italian aristocrats?

With a sudden darting look at me, she said: “You know Frascatoni. What do you think of him?”

“A fine specimen,” said I. “A fascinating man.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Fascinating enough, I suppose. But--would you _trust_ him?”

“I would not,” replied I. “Nor any other man. I have long since learned not to trust even myself. But I’d trust him as far as the next man--as far as it’s necessary to trust anyone.”

She nodded in appreciation and agreement. “I believe he genuinely cares for me,” she said, adding with a melancholy look at me, “And it’s pleasant to be cared about.”

“So I have heard,” said I.

“You never wanted anyone to care about you,” said she. “You are independent of everything and everybody.”

“That’s safest,” said I.