Chapter Twenty-Two I
As was her custom, Cornelia had written in a decidedly lyrical vein, sounding in turn the strings of pathos, misgiving and melancholy sympathy. Without formal salutation the letter began:
My heart is torn for you, Araminta dearest, as I follow the story of your wanderings. It is a story that reopens old wounds, for in your sufferings I again experience my own. With what a different poignancy! Different as Claude Fontaine and Percival Houghton are different. I know that Claude possesses the supreme fascination that leads so many women to throw themselves recklessly into his arms. He turns their heads; but at least he does not rob them of their souls. This, Percival Houghton did. Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as Percival, that he has not the latter’s dominating will or piratical psychic personality. Your soul can still be called your own.
How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best! Araminta, every woman is fated to learn at the hands of some man how unscrupulous all men are in matters of sex. But is it not strange that men should outflag us at what is called our own game, and that women should let themselves be deceived by the fact that they are always credited with the victory? This indeed is man’s greatest cleverness. He snatches the spoils even whilst loudly protesting that we have him completely at our mercy. Yes, men are our masters in the game of love, the game that is said to be our profession and their pastime. My dear, the amateur who gaily calls the tune has a much better time of it than the professional who is compelled to do the fiddling—unless the fiddler plays wholly and solely for love or is clever enough to exact a price insuring freedom after the dance is over. But this is an elementary principle which I need hardly point out to you, Araminta.
You say you do not mean to marry Claude, although you believe it lies within your power to do so. At the same time, you speak in harsh disparagement of free unions. To be candid, this mystifies me. I hope, however, that I’m wrong in detecting, beneath your criticism, a subtle reproach. If I’m right, you’ve done me a grievous injustice.
Didn’t I consistently urge that free love is for daring and devoted spirits only? And what wonders have not the bold and brave done for our sex in the last thirty years! Look how the market value of men has fallen and how the market value of women has risen, if I may use the crude language of Mazie Ross. No longer do women live, as did our grandmothers, for the sole purpose of “charming” men or of sipping the nectar of their “homage.”
Pray observe, dear child, that I never decried marriage in the case of the few women who are strong enough to command the legal tyrant instead of submitting to him, and who thus are in a position to straighten out the irrational knot from the inside. As for the common rule of females, if they will go on flocking to the altar in droves, if they will be infatuated with marriage after we have opened their eyes to man—why, let them rush in where angels fear to tread. And let them take the consequences, too. Small blame to the nuptial fire if it scorches the likes of them. Is the flame guilty because the moths dash in?
But now for the news, although there is precious little.
First, Lydia Dyson has produced a new novel—and a new baby. You know she lets this happen (I mean the baby) every once in so often because she says it is the only way to keep her complexion perfect. (It really is a perfect olive, in spite of the quantities of gold-tipped cigarettes she smokes.) The baby, like its predecessors, has been given out for adoption to a childless couple in good circumstances, Lydia contending (a la Rousseau) that an artist makes a very unsatisfactory parent. Lydia’s other achievement, her novel, “The Mother Soul,” has been running serially in the Good Householder. It’s netting her the usual mint of money, ten thousand dollars down, to say nothing of copious extras in the shape of book and dramatic royalties.
There’s Lydia for you, flourishing like the green bay tree! Not like your poor Cornelia, who’d be happy enough to take the child and let the royalties go.
Robert is rarely here nowadays. Charlotte Beecher, therefore, doesn’t show up often, and so, what with you and Claude in Europe, I’d be monarch of all I surveyed, if Hercules didn’t take pity on me and come in to drive the blue devils away. He spoils me almost as much as you did. A dear, dutiful boy he is, as fond of work as a camel. I feel conscience-stricken when I think how lightly I accept his devotion. Ought I to make him happy? Ah, well-a-day! I’m sometimes tempted—ah, how I’m tempted!
But a poor soulless thing like me mustn’t think of such things.
Harry’s prospects have improved wonderfully of late. You know his heart was never in professional wrestling. He deliberately gave up a promising career on the mat, as they call it, where he acquired that odious nickname of the “Harlem Gorilla.” Poor Hercules is about as much like a gorilla as I am like an elephant. Refusing engagements to appear in public contests brought him down on his luck for a time. That’s how he happened to land in the model tenements. He never was even the least bit of a radical. Among the Outlaws, our gorilla is quite a lamb.
Well, this repulsive part of his career is over for good. He is now the physical director of the Bankers’ Club. (What think you of my prophetic nickname for Hercules? The bankers have their monster clubhouse on Fifth Avenue, almost next door to the Pillars of Hercules, as the Gotham and St. Regis hotels are called.) It’s a good position. And an even better one is in sight. The Life Prolongation Institute (I say, Araminta, what a name!) has lately approached him in regard to a post at one of its European branches.
Wouldn’t it be odd, if we all met some fine morning in Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees?
As for Robert, he has become as mad as a March hare. His Guild League seems to have dropped through a hole in the ground. (I predicted that, too!) He says the Guildsman propaganda was too radical for the old-style Laborites and too conservative for the Bolsheviks. But I can’t pretend to follow these distinctions.
At all events, he was very much at loose ends for a while. One or two excellent openings in the newspaper line he calmly turned down with the remark that a successful journalist would have to be as corrupt as Falstaff and Hutchins Burley rolled into one. He is really quite incorrigible. He never seems to be content until he has got himself thoroughly on the wrong side of everybody who might be of service to him.
There are any number of instances of this trait. His personal quarrel with Hutchins Burley was quite unnecessarily lengthened into a business feud. He never made the most of his friendship with Claude (think what a chance it was for a man in his circumstances to be intimate with a man in Claude’s!). He got himself in the black books of the whole newspaper world because of his agitation for the Guildsmen. And he is always flinging off violently from his friends. To this day, he rebuffs Hercules and me whenever we try to help him.
But finally, on account of his mother and sister out West, he had to put his pride in his pocket. It was too late! Did Cato ever tell you that he had an uncle with bushels of money in California? Well, it seems there is such a relative, and Robert applied to him for temporary help. The uncle, a chip of Robert’s block—for he evidently has little use for affection, family or otherwise—preserved a discreet silence. After cross-questioning our friend, I found out why. He had painstakingly sent the old gentleman (who made a fortune in real estate speculation) his own pamphlet on land profiteering! As I said before, Robert is incorrigible.
What does he do next but hit on the brilliant scheme of going to work as a clerk in an insurance company, downtown. Denman Page’s insurance company, as it happens. Fancy our fastidious Cato with his quick ways and ideal enthusiasms sitting from nine till five at a poky desk in Wall Street. And is this fearful sacrifice made for the sake of turning over an honest penny (thirty dollars a week, to be exact)? Never believe it. Robert’s little game is to help organize the mercantile employees into a radical labor union. Can you beat it?
He says that the clerk is the most abject boot-licker and willing slave of the ruling robber bankers to be found in the whole industrial system (I won’t vouch for the accuracy of this description). He (the clerk, that is) needs redemption. But although plenty of rich people go a-slumming amongst the very poor and downtrodden, nobody is self-sacrificing enough to go on a mission of mercy amongst the benighted and degraded “clerkical” classes.—And so he raves on.
In retaliation, the big bankers and insurance chiefs have also formed a society to resist the inroads of Robert’s infant union. Denman Page, Charlotte’s indefatigable wooer, is one of the most aggressive leaders in the employers’ society and is doing his utmost to persecute Robert and make his life as miserable as possible. Robert, loathing business, hangs on downtown, purely out of regard for his union.
He is simply throwing his natural talents away. All so unnecessarily, too. At any moment, he could marry Charlotte Beecher for the asking, and develop his executive ability—become a great public administrator or something like that. Charlotte isn’t noted for her beauty; but she is young, she has several millions in her own right, and she is no mere society trifler either. She works almost as hard at her sculpture as if she had to earn her own living. Lots of men are after her, naturally enough. They say Denman Page would give his eyeteeth to add Charlotte’s fortune to his bank account. But she seems to want Robert. Rumor has it that she has even proposed to him several times. To Cato! And leave it to him to fish up some silly scruple about not selling his independence to a rich wife!
Still, I saw him in Charlotte’s studio in the Mews lately. He was quite lover-like (in his Catonic way). I hear he goes there pretty often. So perhaps there’s hope.
What a picture I could draw of how your departure with Lothario set the Lorillard tenements by the ears! The headlines, the excitement among the Outlaws, Kips Bay in a buzz, buzz, buzz—but you can imagine it much better for yourself. Cato alone took it with stoical calm. Araminta, he astonished me! Hardly a syllable would he say about it. A stern sort of “make your bed and lie in it” expression was all we could get out of him. And he shut off questions with the remark that it was entirely your affair.
Yes, we all thought Big Hutch held the key to the leakage into the papers. He hates Claude with an undying hatred for some reason unknown to me, and he has an immortal tomahawk out for you because you so openly showed the disgust he filled you with. “Hell hath no fury like a Hutchins scorned.”
The old villain was lately appointed a member of a newspaper mission to travel de luxe to Russia. Trust Hutchins to keep himself in clover. Mazie Ross, as bad, as pretty, and as syrupy as ever, is to be his traveling companion (all on the quiet, of course—the purpose of the mission being to report on the stability and morality of the Bolshevik regime). And they say that ethics is a humorless science!
Keep me informed, dear child, of your plans and movements. What shall I send to Lothario? Rosemary and rue, or poniards and poison? My fondest hopes and wishes—from my heart—wing their way to you.
Ever your devoted, Cornelia.
Janet finished reading with a sigh. The letter changed none of her opinions or plans. It merely determined her all the more strongly to suppress her desire to write to Robert.
II
On returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a start, for Claude was there. Usually when he went away in anger, he returned late at night, and it was now only late in the afternoon. A glance showed her that he was in gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of flowers. It was a part of his peace offering.
Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved her of her parcels and kissed her ardently.
“Darling,” he exclaimed, “what a bad-tempered beast I’ve been! Can you forgive me once more?”
She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic personality.
“Why not?” she said, withdrawing from his caresses.
“You are an angel, dearest,” he said, seizing her hands.
“Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude.”
“Janet! Say anything but that. Prescribe any punishment you please. But do let’s begin again, with a clean slate.”
“You can’t get the slate clean when the scratches are too deep, Claude. To forgive and act as though nothing had changed is hard; to forgive and act as though everything had changed is harder still. We must both be sensible and do the second, the harder thing.”
“What do you mean?” said Claude, in alarm.
“I mean that we’ll be much happier apart.”
“Don’t say that again, Janet dearest. You are taking my conduct of the last two weeks too seriously. It isn’t fair. I’ve frequently behaved abominably. I don’t try to excuse it. I admit it. But remember the constant worry I’ve had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office. That boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders from my father to be a thorn in my side. And he’s doing his level best to please. Not a day passes but what he gives me a hundred lancet scratches ending in a good stiletto stab.”
Worry had not made Claude less handsome. The ring and tang of his voice thrilled Janet almost as much as of old. His patrician manner and flashing blue eyes were almost as irresistible. Yet Janet put away his arm and said:
“Claude, I know you’ve had a very trying time. It’s altogether on my account, isn’t it? All the more reason for me to go away.”
“But what on earth do you want to leave me for?”
“For a thousand reasons.”
“You might deign to mention one.”
“Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when you laugh, you want me to be gay. You never think that I may have moods of my own, moods that won’t dance to your piping. You never think of any one but yourself.”
“Oh, don’t I? I’ve had you on my mind all day. I’ve thought of nothing else. And it’s not the first day that I’ve spent in a torment of worry about your attitude towards me.”
A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite carried him off his feet. By precedent, it should have carried Janet off her feet, too.
She stood her ground in silence.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t be obstinate,” he said, his confidence beginning to desert him. “It isn’t late yet,” he added, in a more pleading tone. “We can still have an awfully good time this evening. Do be nice—”
“Nice!”
She stood up and looked at him. He mistook the mocking expression in her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice the faintly contracting brows above her long-lashed eyelids.
“Yes, nice and reasonable,” he went on, pursuing what he thought an advantage.
“Reasonable!” The faint contraction was now a forbidding bar. “I’m trying hard to be reasonable, Claude.”
After a pause, she smiled again. “You pull me one way, reason pulls me another,” she said, with characteristic candor. “Now see if my plan doesn’t follow reason. You left this morning, for a short while; I’m leaving tomorrow, for good and all. You left me in anger; I should like to leave you good friends. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. Will you help me?”
He flung himself angrily into an armchair.
“You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself in a strange country.”
“Mad or not, that is exactly what I think,” she said, coldly. “And I shall begin to pack my things now.”
She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the words. Claude looked on, speechless. After a while he went over and, roughly taking hold of one of her arms, continued his remonstrance.
“You can’t even read the language, let alone speak it. And you haven’t a penny of your own. Or do you expect to earn money on the streets?”
“Not until I’ve exhausted the regular channels,” she said, maddeningly calm.
Inwardly she was boiling. She looked at him steadily until he released her arm. Then she added:
“I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even in a strange country. Here are some socks I bought for you at a counter where no English was spoken.”
“The devil take the socks!” he said, hurling the package to the other end of the room.
She sat down on a tuffet beside her case.
“You know quite well that I had a little money of my own, which I brought with me,” she said. “That will do me to begin on.”
“To begin on!” he raged, pacing the floor violently. “What do you mean by begin on? Is this another secret? As for your money, I know nothing about that either. I’m continually being slapped in the face with something or other that you’ve kept in the dark. But what’s a little deceit among lovers?”
“I’ve never deceived you,” she said, growing bitter as she went on. “In any case, deceiving you would be a trifle compared with the crime of deceiving myself.”
“Deceiving yourself?”
“Yes. Do you suppose I could ever have lived with you, without first thoroughly deceiving myself?”
Claude’s anger cooled at this bitter question. Janet was now worked up, and anything was better than the killing indifference she had so far maintained. He closed her valise and sat down on it, at her side.
“Janet,” he pleaded, “you were never like this before. So unyielding, so cold. And I had planned that we’d make a gala night of it. Look at these lovely flowers. Don’t you understand their symbolism? I’m going to do the right thing. I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels, at once!”
“You’ve offered to do that before.”
“Yes, but I really mean it this time.”
“And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused. You see, I always assumed that your offers were made in good faith.”
“You are making a fool of me.”
“No one can do that but yourself.”
He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while she calmly went on packing. He hated her for it. She was rude, inflexible, callous. Her motives were unfathomable. She was never twice the same. Yet at this moment he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had ever wanted her before. He burst into suspicion.
“What’s the real reason, Janet? Some one has written to you—Robert, I dare say?”
He took her silence for an affirmation.
“I thought so. Now I understand your change of attitude. He’s been preaching at you. It’s his specialty. His views, curse them, are like a drought. They dry up all one’s spontaneity and natural affection. Long ago, in the tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you. Whenever you went out with him, you came back with your heart hardened against me.”
She laughed and said:
“What nonsense! You’re quite wrong. Robert hasn’t wasted any of his valuable sermons on me. He hasn’t sent me so much as a scrap of paper.”
“Then what has changed you, all of a sudden? Is it my father you’re afraid of? That would be too absurd. He’ll come around. He has got to come around. He can’t help himself. I know too much about the business, its secrets and its weaknesses. So don’t worry on that score.”
“Claude, it’s all very fine. But I don’t see myself as your wife. I’d never do. You need a woman to manage you like a mother and to flatter you like a squaw. But—these jobs not being in my line—I’d criticize you like an equal. And you know you simply can’t stand criticism.”
Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage? Claude was appalled at the apathy of the feminine intellect in the face of a miracle. Didn’t she know what his offer meant? (He tried to convey it to her—not in the exact words, but in euphemisms.) It meant a change of estate from mistress to wife. The wife of Claude Fontaine! The wife of a merchant prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the only sort of prince that counted in the twentieth century; no mere paper prince or petty Venetian dogeling, but a prince whose rank had an international validity and whose means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire). It was not conceivable that she knew what she was about. Still, he had to face the possibility.
And this desertion on top of all he had endured in consequence of leaving America with her!
“Isn’t there a shred of gratitude in you?” he cried out, aghast at her unyielding front.
“I’m not ungrateful, Claude,” she said, gravely. “Living with you has been a liberal education. I’ve learned the truth about marriage without binding myself for life; I’ve also learned the difference between affection and infatuation without breaking either your heart or mine. Can I ever repay this? If every girl could have some experience in living with a man or two before she made a permanent choice, I believe marriage would be far more popular.”
“Confound your opinions,” he shouted, in an agony of rage.
With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and furiously lifted her to her feet.
“Look here. Do you think you can calmly turn your back on me after what I’ve put up with, after all I’ve suffered on your account? Exactly why do you want to go away at the very moment that I’m marooned in this infernal town? You’ve got to tell me straight! Is it sheer insanity, or a craze for romantic adventure?”
With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:
“I’m leaving you because we have nothing in common except our physical attraction. And that is mostly physical repulsion now, as you see.”
“Haven’t you one spark of love for me left?”
“Claude, with all your faults I love you still,” she replied, smiling, as she rallied her self-command.
He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.
Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at him with a pang of remorse. He edged away from her with a passionate sense of injury.
“Remember,” he warned her, “if you leave me, that will end everything. Society may ostracize you, or toss you back into the gutter. Don’t ask me to lift a finger.”
The friendly words froze on her lips. She quietly resumed packing.
He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating with his fury.
“If you’re going, you needn’t wait until tomorrow!” he said, drawing in his breath. “You can go now, for all I care.”
He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his body set.
While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary things, he was saying to himself:
“This damned idea of independence! She thinks she can frighten me. She thinks I won’t let her go. I’ll call the bluff, and she’ll come back flying.”
All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.
But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the echo of his savage tones.
How like her mother he was!
Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.