THE moment I was in London, and before that Sothewell Abbey cold had a chance to grip me, I went at it. Starve, stay in bed, and keep the air out for a day—that’s the way to put a cold out of business. Unless it be some occasional prodigy endowed with superhuman common sense and self-restraint, no one learns how to take care of his health except by experience. The doctors know precious little about disease; about health they know nothing—naturally, they have no interest in health. The average human being not only does not know how to take care of his health, but also does not wish to learn how; health involves self-denial, cutting down on food, drink, tobacco and the other joys of life. So he who wishes to avoid enormous payments in discomfort and pain for slight neglects and transgressions of physical laws has to work it out for himself. I’ve made several valuable discoveries in the science and art of living; about the most valuable of them is that every illness starts under cover of a cold. So I instantly take myself in hand whenever I begin to sneeze and to have chilly sensations or a catch in the throat. The result has been that since I was thirty I have not spent a cent on doctors or lost a day through illness, and I’ve eaten and drunk about as I pleased. I can see gentle reader’s expression of disdain at these confessions as to my care for health. You are welcome to your disdain, gentle reader. It is characteristic of your shallowness. You see, the chief difference between you and me is that I have imagination while you have not. And as I have imagination, illness makes to my mind a picture of revolting internal conditions which I can no more endure than I could endure having my outside unclean and frowzy.
Margot, coming by a later train, sent me word that she was ill. She had called in a doctor. He poured some medicine—some poison—into her, of course, and so got her into the way of giving him an excuse for robbing her. In England doctors rank socially with butchers and bakers, rank scientifically with voodoo quacks and astrologers. They still look on a cold as a trifle, and treat it by feeding! The food and drugs she swallowed soon reduced Margot to the state where it was taking all the reserve force of her youth to save her from severe illness. I was entirely well the following day, and went to see her. The doctor—five guineas or twenty-five dollars a visit—was coming twice a day; his assistant—two guineas or ten dollars a visit—was coming four times a day. The Marchioness of Crossley, a rich American, was ill. Her social position and Dr. Sir Spratt Wallet’s rank as a practitioner together made it imperative that the illness be no ordinary affair. The second day he issued bulletins to the papers. I attempted to interfere in the treatment, but Margot would not have it.
“She’s growing worse instead of better,” said I to Wallet.
“Certainly, sir,” replied he. “That is the regular course with a cold.” And he stroked his whiskers and looked at me with dull, self-complacent, supercilious eyes. “The regular course, sir.”
“In England, but not in America,” said I.
“I dare say,” said he, with heavy politeness. Then, after a heavy pause, “her ladyship will be quite fit again in a week—quite fit.”
As she was eating three strapping meals a day and taking rhinitis and another equally poisonous drug I had my doubts. But once you let a doctor in you are powerless. If you order him out without giving him an opportunity in his own good time to cure the mischief he has done the consequences may be serious. Not to linger over this incident in high life, Wallet made out of that cold a hundred guineas, not counting his commissions on the fees of his assistant, on the wages of a trained nurse, and on the stuff from the chemist. If Margot had been English born the bill would have been about one fourth that sum—for the same rank in society. Slay the Midianite! But that’s the rule the world over. When I am “trimmed” abroad I console myself with reflecting on the fate of the luckless foreigner visiting America. Europe trims us to the quick; but we trim to the bone; and when no foreigners are handy we keep in practice by trimming one another.
Margot’s illness did not interfere with my efforts to right her matrimonial ship and set it in its course again. I had greatly modified my original plan. It involved my seeking the Marquis. My new plan was to compel him to seek me. I proceeded so successfully that on the morning of the third day of Margot’s “indisposition,” while I was at breakfast in my sitting room, Markham came in with a grin of triumph on his face. “You win,” he cried. “But you always do.”
“Dawkins?”
“Here’s his card.”
“Let him up. No—wait.... Tell him I’ll see him in half an hour.”
Gentle reader, you are about to learn why in that controversy over settlements I abruptly abandoned the struggle and yielded everything. I worked with Markham at my mail and telegrams for three quarters of an hour before I let Dawkins in. I saw at a glance that my treatment of him had produced the effect I had hoped. He was a typical middle-class Englishman—but all middle-class Englishmen are typical. He was fattish and baldish and smug. He had a beef-and-beer face, ruddy and smooth except tufts of red-gray, curling whiskers before either ear. He had cold, shrewd, pious eyes—the eyes of the hypocrite who serves the Lord with every breath he draws, and gets a blessing upon every crime he commits before committing it. In my first interviews with him I, being new to England, had made the mistake of treating him as an equal, that is, as a human being. My respect for myself forbids me to meet any of my fellow-members of the human race in any other fashion. But experience has taught me that in doing business with a man, it is being absolutely necessary that you dominate him unless you are willing to have him dominate you, the most skillful care must be taken to impress him with your superiority. A certain amount of “side” is useful in America. A lot of it is imperative in England; and if you are dealing with an Englishman who feels that he is low, you dare not treat him as an equal or he at once imagines you are lower than he, and despicable—and you can do nothing with him.
I had suffered, and so had my lawyer, Norman, for our American way of treating Dawkins. I appreciated my mistake afterwards, and resolved not to repeat it. I studied the manner of Crossley and Blankenship and the other upper-class men toward the middle and lower classes, and I learned to copy it, an accomplishment of which I am not proud, though common sense forbids me to be ashamed of it. Dawkins, entering with heels thoroughly cooled, made ready to put out his hand, but did so hesitatingly. He saw that his worst fears were realized, altered the handshaking gesture into a tug at his right whiskers. Nor did I offer him a seat, but simply looked at him pleasantly over the top of my newspaper and said:
“Ah, Dawkins, is that you?”
“Good morning, Mr. Loring. Hope you are well, sir,” said Dawkins, now squeezing awkwardly into his proper place.
I half turned my back on him and dictated a note and a telegram to Markham. Then I glanced at Dawkins again. “Ah, Dawkins, yes—what were you saying?”
“I would esteem it a favor, sir, if you would give me a few minutes of your time—alone.”
“We are alone,” said I. “What is it?”
The solicitor shifted his portly frame uneasily, smoothed his top hat with his gloved left hand, glanced dubiously at Markham. “The matter is confidential, sir—relating to—to the family.”
“Mr. Markham knows more about my affairs than I do,” said I. “Don’t beat about the bush, Dawkins. I have no time to waste.”
“Very well, sir. I beg your pardon. It concerns those bonds—the bonds you turned over to me in arranging the settlements.”
“Yes. I remember. Great Lakes and Gulf bonds, were they not?”
“Precisely, sir. You bound us to a stipulation that they were not to be converted for at least five years.”
“That’s right,” said I. “In fact, I made it impossible for you to convert them.”
A pained expression came into the face of Dawkins.
“I believe I conceded everything else your client demanded,” pursued I.
“But it now develops, sir,” said Dawkins, “that that was the only important thing.”
“Really?” said I.
“You have doubtless seen the papers these last few days—the stock market.”
“Yes.... Yes—so the bonds are dropping. That’s unfortunate.”
“Dropping rapidly,” said Dawkins. “And there are rumors that Great Lakes and Gulf will soon be practically worthless.”
“So I’ve read.”
“I’ve come to ask you to release us. We wish to sell. We must sell. If we don’t the settlement on your son-in-law will be worthless.”
I smiled agreeably. “As worthless as his promises to my daughter. As worthless as he is.”
Dawkins was breathing heavily. His pious eyes were snapping with rage. He had prided himself on his astuteness. He had gloated over his shrewdness in outwitting Norman and me. And now he discovered that the boot was on the other leg. I had trapped him and put him and his client in my power.
I leaned back comfortably and smiled. “Of course I know nothing about it, Dawkins, but I am willing to make a Yankee guess that the bonds will continue to drop until——”
When my pause became unendurable, he said: “Yes, sir. Until when?”
“Until I discover some signs of value in my son-in-law. Then he may discover some signs of value in the bonds. Our America is a peculiar country, Dawkins.”
“Peculiar will do, sir,” said he with respectful insolence. “But I should have chosen another word.”
I shook my head laughingly. “What bad losers you English are!” said I. “But—I’ll not detain you. Good morning, Dawkins.”
“Then I am to understand, sir——”
But I had my back squarely to him and was busy with Markham, who took his cue for the little comedy we were playing like the well-trained American business man that he was. Presently Markham said, “He’s gone, and I never saw a madder man get out of a room more awkwardly.”
You, gentle reader, who know about as much of the science of managing men in practical life as you know of any other phase of the world-that-is—you, gentle reader, are shocked by my rudeness to a polite, well-educated, well-dressed Englishman. And you hope—and feel—that I overreached myself. But let me inform you—not for your instruction but for my own satisfaction—courtesy has to be used most sparingly. Human vanity is so monstrous that men eagerly read into politeness to them—the most ordinary politeness—evidence that their superiority is inspiring fear, awe and desire to conciliate them. You often hear men in high place severely criticised for being rude, short, arrogant, insulting. Do not condemn them too hastily. It may be that they were driven into this attitude toward their fellows by the disastrous consequences of courtesy. Be polite to a man and he will misunderstand. Be cool to him and he, thickly enveloped in his own good opinion of himself, will not feel it. Rudeness, overt and unmistakable, is often the one way to reach him and save not only yourself but also him from the consequences of his vanity. It is the instinct of big men to be big and simple and natural in their dealings with their fellows. The mass of little men with big vanities compels them to suppress this instinct; and by suppression it inevitably becomes in time crushed out of existence. How can one who is busy continue to show consideration for others if they, instead of showing a return consideration for him, take it as tribute to their importance and begin to rear and impose and trample?
To cite my own relatively unimportant case, I have long had a reputation for coldness and meager civility in my business relations. I recall distinctly the desperate pressure of sheer imposition that led me to abandon my early openness to all comers at all times. And I admit that I did change; rather abruptly, too, for it suddenly came to me why I was slipping backwards. But looking only at my career since the change, when I think of the boredom I have endured, the folly I have permitted to waste my valuable time—when I recall the forbearance I have shown in sparing impudent and lazy incompetence where I might, yes, ought to have used the ax—when I think of my good-natured tolerance in face of extremest daily provocation, year after year, I marvel at myself and feel how unjust, how characteristically the verdict of little shallow men, is the attack on me as cold and unsympathetic. When I consider how the leaders of the human race have been tempted to tyranny, I cannot understand why history is able to record comparatively few real tyrants, most of them being homicidal lunatics like Nero, or success-crazed megalomaniacs like Napoleon, and almost none men of sanity. If the great of earth were as vain, as selfishly, as egotistically inconsiderate of the small as the small are of the great and of each other, would not the story of history have come to an end long ago for lack of surviving characters?
Two days after Dawkins came Crossley. I knew that in America there is no one so easily frightened as a rich man who has inherited his wealth and does not know whether, if he lost it, he could make a living or not. All rich men are cowards, but that species is craven. I suspected that the same thing was true of the European type—the nobleman with the grotesque pose of disdain for money that convinces and captivates you, gentle reader, and your favorite authors. Crossley’s face instantly showed me that my suspicion was correct. He had been dissipating wildly for several weeks, but it did not account for the look in his eyes. If, gentle reader, you wish to learn the truth about the aristocracy you worship—which you do not—get an aristocrat where you can cut off or turn on his supply of cash at will. You will then discover that he who has a stiff neck also has supple knees—the stiffer the neck the suppler the knees.
Crossley was a clever chap in his way; that is, he knew his business of idle spender of unearned money thoroughly. Another mode of putting it would be the commonplace and less exact if more alluring phrase “aristocrat to his finger tips.” There are many modes of cringing. He showed judgment and taste—judgment of me, taste in sparing himself—in his choice of the mode. With fright and wariness in his eyes—the look of readiness to go to any depths of self-abasement in gaining his end—he put a tone of manly, bluff, shamefaced contrition into his voice as he said:
“Pardon my breaking in on you this way. I’ve just heard. Is she very ill?”
He meant he had just heard about the bonds. I knew he meant that, and he knew I knew it. But we were men of the world. “Not desperately ill,” said I. “Only about twenty guineas a day.”
He smiled a faint but flattering appreciation of my humor, then resumed his gloomy anxiety and self-reproach. “But she is ill. I read it in one of those screaming ha’penny rags and came as fast as ever I could. The truth is—well, we’ve had a bit of a row. Has she told you?”
“Not much,” said I. “A little.”
“I’ve acted the skunk, the howling skunk—and I want to— Do you think she’ll see me?”
“If you wish, I’ll find out.”
“I’d be no end grateful,” said he with enthusiasm.
She saw him as soon as she could make herself presentable—and her delay gave him a chance to tone up his nerves and to smooth out his face. That afternoon I was able to telegraph Edna that all was well The Crossleys were reconciled; Love had scored another of his famous triumphs. She came over the following day, but I had sailed for America a few hours before.
The day after my arrival in New York I saw Mary Kirkwood and Hartley Beechman lunching together at Delmonico’s. In those days that meant an engagement actual or impending—or, at least, a flirtation far advanced into the stage of loverlike intimacy. I was in the passageway looking through the glass and the screen of palms. I stood there long, noting every detail of her. She was well, perfectly well—of that much her eyes and her color assured me. Is there anything lovelier than a clear dark skin, tastefully set off by black-brown hair? Was she happy? I could not tell. Still in her face was that restless, expectant look—not unlike the expression of a child being shown a picture book and too impatient for the next page rightly to examine the one that is open. An intense interest in life, an intense vitality—that fascinating capacity to love, if she found the right man. And her beauty——
Beauty she undoubtedly had. But charm does not lie in beauty—physical charm, I mean. There is a certain light in the eyes, a certain curve of cheek and throat, of bosom and arm—and the blood flames and rushes. She had charm for me. Her beauty impressed others; it was her charm that made her the one woman to me.
Blankenship came to take me into the café where we were to lunch. I went with the meager consolation that while I had stood there she had given Beechman not a single glance with any suggestion of a feeling it would have wounded me to the quick to see. Should I speak to her? Did I dare risk the attempt? Would not speaking to her be merely a useless torment? After a long struggle that could have but one end, I said: “Excuse me,” rose and went to the palm room. They were gone; the waiter was clearing the table at which they had been sitting. I stared round dazedly, returned to Blankenship.
“You’re not up to the mark—what?” said he.
“New York doesn’t agree with me.”
“I hate towns. They give you such dirty second-hand stuff to breathe. Let’s move on—what?”
But it seemed there was no place on earth for me. Don’t judge me so poorly as to think, or to imagine I thought, this was due wholly to Mary Kirkwood. I wish to be carefully, exactly accurate in this frank recital of a man’s point of view. She was responsible for my forlorn state to the extent that loving her had revealed to me the futility and failure of my own life and had made me see another sort of life that would have been possible with her, that was impossible without her—without love and comradeship. But loving her did not make my life empty; it was already empty, though I had not realized it. I understood now why the big business men, as soon as they reached security, cast about for some real interest. Most of them—nearly all—were as unfortunate in their family relations as I. They had trivial wives and trivial children—mere silly strutters and spenders. They sought interest in art, in science, in religion, in exploration, in philanthropy, in politics, in stamps and butterflies, in old books and antiques, in racing stables and prize fighting, in gambling, in drink, in women. Their craving was now mine. How to find an interest that would make life attractive to me, with Mary Kirkwood left out—there was my problem.
While waiting for the solution, I followed Blankenship to the Northwest. The second day from New York, as he and I were walking up and down the platform during a halt—at St. Paul, I think it was—Hartley Beechman joined us.
“Didn’t I see you in the café at Delmonico’s a few days ago?” said he. “I was getting my hat and stick in a rush. It certainly looked like your back.”
“It was,” said I. And I was seized with a wild longing to escape from him and a wilder longing to hold on to him and to pour out question after question.
“Mrs. Kirkwood and I were lunching together,” he went on. “We talked of you. I told her I thought I had seen you, and she said she heard you were in town and was much hurt because you hadn’t looked her up.”
“I was merely passing through,” said I.
“She has an enormous admiration for you,” continued he. “She says you have imagination—which means that she thinks you in the small class. You know the world divides into sheep and goats on imagination, with the mass in the have-not class. I believe it’s the true distinction between House of Have and House of Have-not.”
“She is well?” said I.
“Always. She knows how to take care of herself. I never knew a woman so sensible—and sensible means the reverse of what it’s usually supposed to mean when applied to a woman.”
This hardly sounded like an engaged man talking of his fiancée. On the other hand, Beechman was a peculiar chap.
“Does she still live in the country?”
“Just now—yes. Last winter she kept house for Bob in New York.”
But you will not be interested in how I drew from him bit by bit a hundred details of her life, stories of what she had said and done. I saw Beechman several hours every day until he left us at Seattle. Alternately I thought him merely her closest man friend and her accepted lover. At times I thought he was not quite sure, himself, in which position he stood. When we were having our last talk together I nerved myself and said:
“I heard in London that she was to be married.”
I felt him drawing in and shutting all doors and windows.
“Have you heard anything of it?” pursued I.
“Oh, in the case of a woman like her,” replied he, “there’s always gossip about this man and that.”
“She ought to marry.”
“She will marry.”
I forced a smile, and, as we knew each other so well, I ventured: “You speak as one having authority.”
“Don’t you know she will?” parried he.
“That sounds like evasion,” laughed I.
“Not at all. She cannot escape. Some man will convince her—surely.”
“But so far as you know, no man has?”
His eyes were frankly mocking. “I did not say that,” said he.
And I could get no further.
Before I returned to New York in the autumn I had added a lot of far western enterprises to my already long list of occupations. Everything I touched seemed to succeed. Even my new secretary, Rossiter, proved better than Markham. Markham had an indifferent memory and a fondness for women that was trying. Rossiter forgot nothing and was as shy of the women, including the ladies, as was Lord Blankenship, who yawned and retreated at the very sight of a skirt. The news from England was altogether satisfactory. An heir was hoped for, and Crossley had become a devoted husband and was about to enter politics. This struck me as a huge joke, the more so because I knew that in England Crossley would be welcomed as a source of real strength to his party. It seemed to me amazing how England could stagger along when she was being managed by such men and was grateful for it. But when I spoke to Blankenship about it, he set me to thinking from a different standpoint.
“My son-in-law is going into politics,” said I. “In America he couldn’t be elected dog-catcher.”
“Oh, I fancy money will do most anything most anywhere,” said he.
The news from Paris was equally good. Edna had settled there after a joyous summer going from country house to country house in Britain, and from château to château in France. She had seen one château which she wished me to buy, and she begged me to come over and inspect it. She did not explicitly say so, but I read between the lines that she was greatly strengthening her social position by giving out that she purposed buying a big place. You may imagine how much enthusiasm for her such an announcement would create among noble down-at-the-heel families eager to exchange unsalable old rook-roosts for American dollars. I could hear her talking—how subtly she would put forth the suggestion, how diplomatically she would discuss each worthless stone heap in turn—and how she would rake in the invitations so difficult to get unless one happens to know how, and so easy when one does know.
But with my arrival in New York I had a reverse. A cable came from Edna saying that she was sailing at once and wished to see me.
I could not imagine what she wanted, and I did not waste much time in making guesses. One evening, when Armitage and I were dining together in the Federal Club—Blankenship had sailed for home—the idea flashed into my mind that perhaps Edna wanted a divorce. Immediately I felt that I had hit upon the precise reason for her coming. You will have no difficulty in imagining what was the next idea in my train of thought. If she divorced me I should be free to marry whom I pleased!
It was stupid of me, but in all my revolvings of my hopeless love for Mary Kirkwood never once had I thought of divorcing my wife. I cannot account for this lapse, except as an instance of the universal human failing for overlooking the obvious. There was no religious scruple in my early training to make me shy of divorce. On the contrary, my parents, like most old-fashioned Americans of faiths other than Episcopal and Catholic—and Episcopalians and Catholics were few in the old American stock, except in New York and Baltimore and South Carolina—most old-fashioned Americans believed that living together in wedlock without love was sin, that divorce was no mere necessary evil, but a religious rite as sacred as marriage itself. A house, they held, is either a House of Hate or a House of Love, and no one should remain in a House of Hate, and no child should be brought up there.
No doubt, if Edna and I had been living under the same roof the idea of divorce would have taken form, actively definite form, long before. But we had no home to be a House of Hate. We did not hate each other; we bored each other. And as we were not poor, we lived far enough apart not to annoy each other in the least. I cheerfully paid any ransom she exacted for leaving me free—and you may be sure she was not inexpensive. She had her own fortune—and it gave her quite an income—but she husbanded that. She insisted upon state and equipage, not to mention such small matters as stockings at fifty dollars a pair and chemises at three hundred dollars apiece—for, she knew how lovely she was and demanded for her beautiful body the most beautiful garments that could be devised by French ingenuity at combining cost and simplicity. I was—by instinct rather than by avowed principles—thoroughly old-fashioned in my family ideas. Indeed, I still am; and I say this with no apology. It may be that woman will some day develop another and higher sphere for herself. But first she would do well—in my humbly heretical opinion—to learn to fill the sphere she now rattles round in like one dry pea in a ten-gallon can. I want to see a few more women up to the modern requirements for wife and mother. I want to see a few more women making a living without using their sex charms—a few less ’tending the typewriter with one eye while the other and busier is on the lookout for a husband. I believe in emancipation of women—in votes for women—in all that sort of thing. The one and only way to learn to swim is in the water. I am sick and tired of woman the irresponsible, woman the cozener and milker of man, woman the dead weight upon man, and drawing the pay of a housewife and shirking all a housewife’s duties. So, you see, I am the friend of woman—not of woman’s vanity and laziness and passion for parasiteism, but of woman’s education and self-respect and independence.
I was thoroughly old-fashioned. My notion of wife was the independent, self-respecting equal of her husband. That is, I had the typical American husband’s ideal—the ideal that dates from the pioneer days of no property and of labor for all, the ideal the American man still lives up to, the one that enables woman to betray him. And, having this ideal, I never permitted myself—no, not even when I spoke to her the contrary in words—I never permitted myself to feel that my wife was not in the main what she should be.
If you have borne me company thus far, gentle reader, turn away now. For, dreadful things are coming. I said to Armitage: “Your sister—she’s still in the country?”
“No, she’s abroad,” replied he. “She’s visiting friends in Budapest. Later on she’s to yacht in the East Mediterranean—she and the Horace Armstrongs and Beechman—and—” He gave several names I do not now recall.
“Is she engaged to Beechman?” I asked carelessly, but the question was not one that could sound other than raw.
He smiled—an expression I did not like. At first I thought it a rebuke to my impertinence. Afterwards I saw no such notion was in his mind. “Beechman? Good Lord, no.”
“You are sure?”
“Absolute. He’d not dare go in that direction with her.”
“Why not?” said I.
“Oh—well—you see— She doesn’t care for him,” replied Armitage lamely. I was not liking him so well, now that I knew the world—his world—better and could judge its beliefs and its hypocrisies more accurately.
“He’s an unusual man,” said I. “She might easily care for him.”
“Well, she doesn’t,” retorted he irritably. “I happen to know she doesn’t.”
I was convinced. Armitage’s tone said in effect that he had heard the rumor, had questioned her, had been assured that there was no basis for it.
So, she was abroad—five or six days away. I could not go to her and make a beginning. Would I have gone if she had been within reach? I do not know. I rather think not. As I have said, I was old-fashioned; and the sort of love I felt for her, and my sense of what she had suffered at the hands of the first man she had trusted would have made me wait, I hope, until I was free. Still, love is insidiously compelling. Who can say what love would or would not beguile or goad him into doing? The old-fashioned man, always reminding himself that women haven’t an equal chance with men, was inclined to be considerate in his dealings with a woman. The new-fashioned man lets her look out for herself. I am not sure that he is wrong. Perhaps some who have read thus far will guess the reason for my doubt.
You may imagine how impatiently I waited for Edna to arrive. I am afra