He pulled himself together, smiled mockingly at his own folly of lingering near the unsightly and not too aromatic corpse. “I must get into the woods and breathe it out of my system. Did you see the account of the arrangements for her approaching marriage in this evening’s paper? Nearly a page—and I read every line.”
When he had finished his drink he rose and departed—and I have not talked with him since. He resumed his career; we all know how brilliant it is. As I have said before, I have no sympathy with the silly notion, bruited about by silly flabby people that women ruin the lives of strong men. Now and then a woman may be the proverbial last straw that breaks the camel’s back. But there’s a vast difference between woman the actuality, woman the mere last straw, and woman the vampire, the scarlet destroyer as portrayed in novels and so-called histories. Those mighty men, made or ruined by women—why do we never see them, why do we only read about them?
I resisted the temptation to follow Beechman’s example and read the newspaper account of Mary Kirkwood’s approaching apotheosis into the heaven that is the dream of all true American ladies. There is but one way to do a thing—and that is to do it. I had destroyed or sent back the letters; I had resisted the telegram. I could not yet bar my mind from wandering to her. But I could avoid leading it to her—and I did. So it was by accident that, the following week, I one morning let my eye take in the whole of a four-line newspaper paragraph before I realized what it was about. The purport was that the engagement between Count von Tilzer-Borgfeldt and Mrs. Kirkwood had been broken off because of a “failure to agree as to settlements.” This, in the same newspaper that contained two columns descriptive of the quietly gorgeous marriage of Frascatoni and Edna in my son-in-law’s new house near London.
“Failure to agree as to settlements—” Faugh!
I had calmed until all my anger against her was gone and I was thinking of her as merely human, as the result of her environment like everyone else. I believed now that where she had deceived me she had also deceived herself. And I saw as clearly as in the days of my infatuation that she and I had been made for each other, that our coming together had been one of those rare meetings of two who are entirely congenial. It filled me with sadness that fate had not been kind instead of sardonically cruel, had not brought us together ten years earlier, before the world had poisoned her originally simple and sincere nature. But how absurd to linger over impossible might-have-beens! I had gone as far as I cared to go in the company of those who have made fools of themselves for love.
I believed I could trust myself with her in the same neighborhood. But I was not sure, and I would take no chance. A few days after I read of the broken engagement I departed on the yachting trip to South America.
XIV
There were but two in my party—Dugdale, the playwright, and myself. A more amusing man than Dugdale never lived. He was amusing both consciously and unconsciously. A mountain of a man—bone and muscle, little fat. He had eyes that were large, but were so habitually squinted, the better to see every detail of everything, that they seemed small; and his expression, severe to the verge of savageness, changed the instant he spoke into childlike simplicity and good humor. He made money easily—large sums of money—for he had the talent for success. But he spent long before he made. I think it must have been his secret ambition to owe everybody in the world—except his friends. From a friend he never borrowed. The general belief was that he had never paid back a loan—and I have no reason to doubt it. What did he do with his borrowings? Loaned them to his friends who were hard up. If the list of those he owed was long, the list of those who owed him was longer. If he never paid back, neither was he ever paid.
He could work at sea, or anywhere else—no doubt even in a balloon. On that trip he toiled prodigiously, crouched over a foolish little table in his cabin, smoking endless cigarettes and setting down with incredible rapidity illegible words in a tiny writing that contrasted grotesquely with the enormous hand holding the pencil. He labored altogether at night, after I had gone to bed. He was always astir before me. He slept unbelievably little, probably kept up on the quantities of whisky he drank. However that may be, he was as active by day physically as he was mentally by night. He was all over the boat, always finding something to do—something for me as well as for himself.
The only terms on which Dugdale would consent to go were that I should keep him away from New York not less than two months, and that I should take no one else. I promptly assented to both conditions. It was not the first time he had put me under a heavy debt of gratitude for congenial society. We had made several long trips together, always with satisfaction on both sides. Whatever else you may think of me, I hope I have at least convinced you that I am not one of those rich men who rely for consideration upon their wealth. I believe I am one of the few rich men who can justly claim that distinction. When I ask a man less well off than I am to dine with me—or to accept my hospitality in any way—I ask him because I want him. And I do not either directly or indirectly try to make him feel that he is being honored. I would not ask the sort of man who feels honored by being in the society of bank accounts or of any other glittering symbols in substitute for good-fellowship.