Apologies for love

Dedication

There is a devotion to one’s profession that is akin to genius. It is, at all events, a divinity that brings success. And success naturally commands attention and recognition. It is an evidence of the worth and force of the man. We all admire the one who achieves something, who does something for others, who is in harmony with his surroundings. In all games, the victor is the hero. And in the various affairs of life, the successful man is accorded something of the same place in general opinion as the victor in the stadium. Mr. Frank W. Cooley, Superintendent of the Public Schools of Evansville, Indiana, is gifted with devotion and divinity in his work and therefore wins success. He is clear in his methods, full of his profession to suggestiveness, indefatigable in his labors, strong in executive ability, gentlemanly in his attitude toward all. He has all the qualifications that constitute a practical and capable school Superintendent. No man has done a greater service for the schools of Evansville than has Mr. Cooley. This slight tribute is due him for his unvarying kindliness to the writer.

F. A. M.

Chapter I

D O you remain long in Paris, Miss Wadsworth?” Earl Nero Pensive inquired, as he seated himself beside her and her father in the box of the theatre. His eyes like beaming lights out of shadowless abysm were transfixed upon her as by magic force, and not without a calculating purpose. No one could predetermine the end of the influences begun by this initial stare upon so beautiful a young lady by such a man.

“We leave ‘gay Paris,’ the scene of revolutions and Zola plots, in the early morning — do we not?” shrinkingly turning to her father with a smile that possessed for him more than the veneer of social exactions. He simply nodded assent, a sparkle of mystic communication from his eyes falling on her as he inclined his head and glanced away for no known reason.

The fact was not objectionable to him that English Earls paid court to his daughter, but in this day of penniless counts, and what not, seeking American daughters for their millions, he was not accepting the polished gentry on their own recommendation alone, — lavishness, fine dress, and wealthy manners. An open introduction in so public a place he did not regard as a sufficient passport to a self-respecting girl’s heart and hand.

The signal service code between daughter and father, Merrill Wadsworth, ex-United States Senator, was simple and easy to read. She flashed back the answer: “I’m not afraid of bronze lions in the way.” The Earl was innocent of the establishment of any communication between these two Americans. He was intent on making the most of the meeting.

“I’m truly sorry that you go so soon,” he returned, turning his glittering, gray, full eyes upon Mr. Wadsworth, which politeness required as an accompaniment of the language of his response.

“Our time-limit for our hasty trip to the continent is up,” observed the ex-United States Senator, in natural business tone, seeing that his daughter expected him to make answer.

The play went on. The electric lights cast a greenish tint over the crowded audience. The footlights glared up into the face of a marvelously beautiful woman, who for a brief moment was outrivaling the mockingbird. But beneath the musical vocalization there was a submerged minor note that seemed to hurl defiance at the audience, — if not directly at the box where the Wadsworths were seated. Though attention was divided between the performance and the attentive Earl, Miss Mina Wadsworth nevertheless caught the minor chord upon the sensitive sounding board of her very responsive nature. She had no doubt of it. It affected her.

Earl Nero Pensive was dressed quite in the mode. His manners were perfect. Indeed he was a handsome man, splendid physique, — something like Meredith’s Egoist or Fielding’s Tom Jones, — and possessed a keen sense that promptly penetrated human motives.

At one sweep of his glance he caught the simplex munditiis of her dress but at the same time its costly character and its up-to-dateness. There was no question about its modest modernity and its perfect adaptiveness. It spoke the worth of the girl.

“Ever since your arrival in Europe I have endeavored to meet you,” said Earl Pensive after his cursory survey, in limpid, natural language, a half concealed gurgle of bonhommie in his modulated musical tone. It was designed to be flattery, but it was “too silly” to think he had traced her through the press telegrams in all her evagations with her distinguished father about Europe. That sort of chaff must be used to catch birds of different plumage. He added: “And now in the very last minute, — just my luck.”

“Truly unfortunate,” she returned. Did she mean for her or for him? He could not determine.

And she could not know the inner exclamation of thankfulness he offered his “lucky star” that she was returning home so soon, while at the same time he was expressing his regrets to her, implied in his last remark. He had a past, and he was happy she was departing from the scene of that unworthy part of his existence.

“Who is the very lovely young songstress?” Miss Wadsworth asked after a short stupid pause. But it was an honest inquiry, and not simply the semblance of talk. She knew her name but no more.

“Clarissa Harlow, a star from your great country so productive of the marvelous,” he returned like one striving to express something jaunty.

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“She wears lovely costumes and diamonds.” To be sure she would say that.

“Paris is in a furore, tout-a-fait, over her beauty and singing.”

“She’s a model beauty.”

“A perfect American type.”

Mina read beneath the surface that the Earl was not en rapport wuth the charming young actress. However, this might be due to nationality. The Earl was an easygoing, blase Englishman instead of an enthusiastic Frenchy.

There was much more talk, but at the end of the play these two people had not progressed very far even in a formal relationship. No clinging regrets had reached the stage of frame and glass upon the walls of their memories. It seemed to be a passing affair that was ended in its very beginning.

When the asbestos curtain dropped, her father took her arm and moved toward the nearest street opening. Earl Nero Pensive felt himself denied an opportunity to speak more definitely to her. He was not willing to let the curtain fall upon the drama. He had definite information of the exceeding great wealth of her father. He followed to the door. There he said, in a manner that did not restrict his speech to either one, seeking courtesies :

“I shall be in America soon, taken there by some railroad and other investments.” There was no effort to disguise his motive. His eyes, upon a dead-level of indifference, suggested nothing.

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She knew what courtesy demanded. “Will you have leisure to call upon us while there?”

He made an elaborate bow, in the best form of an Earl, as they parted.

He had manoeuvered long to secure this interview with this superior American girl, a girl more stately than formal, more wise than emotional, more sane than calculating, more true than fanciful, more lovely than designing, more frank than skillful. But to him the beauty of her character appealed less than her moral dollars — a new character given to filthy lucre in this commercial age of human activity. He was sane upon the subject of his pressing need of the mercantile medium of exchange, but he could not put into execution an immediate, effective method of recoup, — unless, unless, by a coup d’amour. For of course love is potent but money is omnipotent. His manner of life had not multiplied his bank notes in any very approved way. His “talent” had not been added to by skillful management. To him life was better employed spending than earning. Trite but true, “non disputandum de gustibus.” His unqualified life had not run the gamut of amusements to the extent that money had no interest for him. On the contrary his dual life demanded almost unlimited credit at the bank, and at present he had no funds upon which to draw, unless his handsome person should prove a splendid investment in American beauty with infinite resources behind it. He was known as the “Earl” Nero Pensive. And the title might be capital for the foolish American women seeking empty titles and paying extortionate prices for them.

Abroad, it was a very practical and serviceable thing to do, — to allow himself to be taken for his brother, Lord Elmdale, who was honored with a parliamentary seat in the House. No one could know the difference, and it took nothing from his brother and added very much to his own bankrupt credit. A roue certainly had no need of fanciful scruples, such as would deny him pleasure and gold, and it was criminal to have a conscience or be hampered by sentimental love.

I will have her, come what may, cost what may, act as she may,” he resolved to himself. The bright, beautiful young singer, Clarissa Harlow, was with him in their automobile. She wondered why he maintained such bungling, sullen silence. At length she asked:

“Has your supply of smiles and good temper run out, — you the man of exhaustless ego. You seem like the gloomy end of nothing mingled with a black chunk of night and stirred with Pluto’s crook.”

“Few things, I confess with due composure, are better than a jest on your lips.” And he slunk deeper within himself, not to invoice his moral assets, or to invent a syllogism against the purity advocates’ doctrine, or to brood because it is pleasurable to be moody and selfish, but to conceal the embryonic scheme then lying deep within like a stone in a muddy river.

As they moodily flashed by the Vendome hotel, the Earl saw the ex-Senator and Mina ascend the broad marble steps, beneath the intense flaring electric light. The glimpse intensified his embryonic scheme.

In the atrium, alluding to Nero Pensive’s first steady search into her eyes, she asked her father:

“Were those looks advances?”

“Estimated in dollars and cents — yes, Mina,” he smiled to her.

“Well,” she flouted with a shrug, a merry leer in the spacious depths of her very brown eyes, “well, the market value of the stock is — O it’s a drug on the market, a very much watered stock, and so to be sure paying small or no dividends.”

“I do not consider much of the British aristocracy very profitable investment just at present,” Mr. Wadsworth said; “but of course I speak in bated breath — to you, Mina.” The confidence was sure, secure.

“I understand. A former United States Senator — . But, all in all, how did he strike you?” She had no idea or motive to conceal from her father, and looked as frank as her question signified. A smile took off the rough edge of directness.

Perfect exterior, — oiled like a sham tongue, polished like a court favorite, graced with all social diplomacy, bold where self-interests demand courage. I know not this man ; but in general titles destroy incentives to manliness and make courtliness superior to character.”

“Not to be critical or serious, nor to be in a laughing mood —

“ ‘If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,

I rede you tent it.’

However, I may never be called on — probably never persuaded — to pass my opinion of a man when he is at a low ebb, — that’s my view of him.”

“A product of hereditary aristocracy — a fate that

H trammels,” said Mr. Wadsworth, smiling archly at her conscious humor.

“Have we said what we wanted to say about him — anything direct about him?” she ashed.

“If not, still we have more conclusive opinions about this specimen of titular genus homo.”

As he parted from her at her room-door for the night:

“Up at six for Calais.”

“Up at six for Calais,” she echoed, but in no manner the imitation of his rich contrabasso.

Chapter II E

VER since I first laid my eyes on you I have been your eternal admirer — worshiper.”

“You have not been discreet and measured in selecting your idol,” and Mina cast her deep, penetrating, calculating brown eyes on him in a critically searching glance.

Earl Nero Pensive was too passive, and leaned back too far in the rear seat of the touring car, and posed too comprehendingly to convince and convict her. She regarded every act and word as an expxression of the soul, and words, false or true, bare evidence of the real ego within. She interpreted the truth of words by the subliminal acts accompanying them. A glance sometimes reveals a whole critical chapter in the psychology of a soul. What Mina saw, rather indifference than active mental state, was not convincing of his sincerity. She saw what became a basis for every future judgment of him. It was a latent, lurking smile, which she interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a flattering approval of himself over her, a conscious sense of their inequality. It seemed to declare that it could not be otherwise, for he was of English blue blood while she was of the common herd — titleless. But not brainless therefore, Mina argued to herself. And the difference would always remain.

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“Men worship true and false gods — none the less worship because a false good,” he responded to her banter. He impulsively whirled his half-smoked cigar away, and the sparks flew where it fell and rebounded as sparks from a bomb painted on canvass.

“You worship a false god?” she queried, half imitating the indifference he seemed to act, — so contrary to his lip professions.

A heavy lurch of the machine over a culvert jostled both considerably, but the motorneer in goggles did not alter his face a shadow to the right or left, — but straight on — on. Their swift flight along the highway on this sweet May day in 1907 had a moral parallel in the swift flood of years along the race course of life of which St. Paul speaks. They were on the main-traveled road from Richmond, Virginia, to Walpole, the beautiful country town, adjacent to which ex-Senator Merriel Wadsworth had a noble country residence, which they named Acadie. This charming country seat was about one hour by auto from Richmond. It was in the heart of his greatest business interests.

Earl Nero Pensive was availing himself of the invitation given in Paris. But at the time the ex-Senator was absent from his country residence on matters political.

“It is very, very pleasant to confide in a god, even though a false one,” said Nero in answer to her observation that he worshiped a false god.

“That, however, doesn’t establish anything, for the credit or honor or worth of the false god,” she argued with a modesty that disarmed the opponent of all acerbity. No, it was not a designing attitude of mind.

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“We generally love truly what we worship truly.”

“No doubt,” she assented so readily as to excite a wonder. In fact her cunning meaning was not lost on him. He glanced up quickly. And the motive prompting his quick, uncalculated glance was detected by her. It annoyed him to know that he was surprised into a disclosure of his motive — any motive, for that matter. For an instant he reprobated himself for his undiplomatic glance. He was in too excellent favor with himself to remain long at loggerheads with himself.

“You will permit me, even in the enforced absence of your father, to say to you that it would be the proudest moment of my life to call you wife — my wife — my unparalleled wife — and present you to my family as my wife.” This was intolerably cool and calculating.

“No titled blood runs in my veins, not a drop, proud to say, though I do claim to belong to the F. F. V. And I can not harmonize the fact that I am titleless with your statement of pride in a titleless wife.”

He observed that she did not affect surprise, suffuse her face with angel blushes, beg for time to consider, and all that, and he was not certain how far she was laughing at him, or leading him on to see how foolish he could be, and how far below the surface she had descended into his miasmic nature. But he knew the force of persistent courtly blarney, and assured himself that by steadfastness in his seeming sincerity he could deceive her — deceive even the very elect.

“Do not speculate on that fact, but on the other, that I am proposing to you now and laying my all at your feet, — titles, family prestige, wealth, and all I have and am.

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What more can I do to convince you of my great and abundant love for you!”

He leaned forward and pretended to zeal that was artificial and to pour out his real soul into her right ear.

“Don’t try.”

“Is it unpleasant?”

“It may be, for all you know. At any rate it’s all Greek to me, and you’ll have to translate into my vernacular tongue.”

“How do you mean that?”

“And do you ask for an exegesis of what is so simple? Then what about your Hellenic phrases pertaining to a life contract? Or is it a contract existing only during good behavior on the feminine side and convenience on the masculine side?”

“You know our English marriage laws?”

“Know better our own state marriage laws.”

He was not satisfied with her keen flippancy. It smacked of a mental joust in which he felt she had unhorsed him.

“Then — I assume from your laughing humor that you do not deny my appeal for your heart and hand.” He was quite too tritely formal to woo and win.

“I have not been asked for a categorical, Carlylean, everlasting yea or nay.”

“What answer do you give me?”

“I do hope now you are not going to have me repeat myself, and restate what I have been answering you all along:” It was plainly a mock plea.

“I am very much in earnest.”

“I do not deny it — do not doubt it — do not want to.”

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“ ‘Was ever woman in this humor wooed.’

Was ever woman in this humor won?’ ”

“Yes, by a Richard. But not by tactless humor was she won, I can assure you, Mr. Pensive. A Romeo knows better how to woo and win than a Jacques. Even the black Moor, who had done something worth relating, found a Desdemona to hear his stories and sigh for his woes.”

He was not impeached from his selfcenter by this thrust direct. The smile on her rubric lips, lips that bore a message in themselves not of words, was faint — not feint, — and it would rub out under other conditions. At the same moment she was struggling with invisible nothings — conjectures about his nature, the gift of God, and not the man-made part of his ego.

“Those cases you cite are cases of love myopia.”

She detected a submerged sneer in his words.

“I can’t pretend to a knowledge of love therapeutics, and can’t therefore distinguish between love myopia and love strabismus; but I think I can know love with and without the fancy touches of imagination and the impressionist daubs.”

He turned a furtive eye on her, though pretending to glance beyond her at a fine farm house they w^ere flashing by. She was glad the automobile veil mottled her face and concealed a bit of half inconsistency she knew was in her large eyes, eyes that spoke and commanded and captured. By a dual process of mind she was saying at the moment to her own secret self, the self that sat on the throne within as judge infallible of all things — the very

Supreme Self: “Sir, because you are proud and overbearing doesn’t fix you perforce as correct; it only establishes the other fellow’s reading of you. I want to find, sir, the real, true, genuine John in you.”

He smartly responded :

“Love is madness, if Nordau and Lombroso have any significance in their utterances.”

Perhaps he did not know what is said in Horace, Satire third, book two, or he would have mentioned Horace also.

“How are you on cold-storage love?” she broke in and away with a twitter in her vocalization. He felt the piquancy and intentional inappositeness of the remark. It was like a frozen guinea down his back.

“A little of it would do me,” he answered numbly, scarcely attentive to the constructive purport of his words. “It’s an ice-cream affair, sweet ice, as it were.”

What non-translatable meaning she could compress into the manner of her utterance of this word! He felt it, roue as he was, like a veritable blow upon his conscious being. This girl seemed slipping away from him, and escaping to the heights where he could not go.

The motor car swung the corner at a speed that threatened to upset and precipitate an undesirable climax, but the expert chauffeur kept steadily on — on. Both seemed unconscious of their going, just as one does down the journey of life, for they were not observing the beautiful, burgeoning scenery along the swift flight.

A thought from Longfellow’s “Endymion” crossed the clear horizon of her mind, seemingly like the promise of a bow in the sky:

Love gives itself, but is not bought;

Nor voice, nor sound betrays Its deep, impassioned gaze.”

He said to her “ah:”

“There is no cold-storage love — all a figure of speech and meaningless. To be frank, there is in these progressive times little sentimental love cultivated among our grown men and women. We recognize that sentimental love belongs primarily to school children, and that grown-ups have nothing to do with it.”

“That certainly is quite, quite clear, considering all that we, grown-ups, have just been saying. I still have faith in the intoxication of sweet, first, young love — that sweet bewilderment, all of heaven, best of all. I confess I take at their worth the fragments of a feast after the guests have gone and the stains of the debauch still mar the table linen. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was a little particular and exacted the best first fruits. The divine Cupid is no less scrupulous as to offerings of refuse and blemished things. They must be perfect.”

“I have just reached the strong, mature period of life, and all I am and all I have I freely lay on the altar as a sacrifice to the God Cupid you worship. I will be a Jacob and serve fourteen years for Rebecca.”

He felt the soft satisfaction of having spoken along the line of her own thoughts. In very truth Mina was without fleck or flaw in her nature — a perfectly lovely creature, perfect as Eve. He was absolutely satisfied of this. He was thirty — nothing below that. She was twenty — nothing over that.

“I’m heart whole and fancy free,” was her daring, defying retort. Her first impulse was to say that a state inspector would be necessary to examine his offering to determine its sanitary condition; but this seemed too flat and she rejected it.

“And will you be mine — mine — mine — ”

“Well!”

“My wife?”

“Does that mean, under your English laws, a life partner of yours?” Her calmness equaled his audacity and made him dislike it for its critical inference.

“Everything of mine!”

“That’s a different proposition from my statement of being heart whole and fancy free, — which by the by is perfectly true.”

He dropped her hand and listlessly leaned back in his seat. At length he said in a partially reflective humor :

“Do you know, you give me the impression that your heart is now in cold storage and will not keep without it.”

“Nevertheless I am heart whole and fancy free.”

He could not observe the smile that lurked beneath her veil, but he knew it was there.

“Then may be won, and by the gods of Israel and Greece and Rome and Egypt and Iceland I’ll win her hand and take the chances on her ice cold heart.”

“Put it — by all the gods at once — and I’ll like it better.”

“Good. And I’ll say by all the gods at once I’ll win you, my dear lady, time and opportunity given.”

She was not mistaken when she noted that it was not love that moved him to this momentary lapse into a small semblance of emotion, but the sense of pique that she was twitting him. She was too all-wise — for a woman !

“And is this your proposal to me?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“Have I reason to?”

“And this in the face of my profession!”

“I imagined it was all a kind of side play for you.”

“No horseplay about it — never more earnest in my life.”

“Have you seen my father?”

“I will as soon as he returns.”

“Do English customs sanction your course this afternoon ?”

“Perfectly under such circumstances.”

“Is this your business in America?”

“It is, I avow.”

“Thanks for the comp.”

“I am happy,” kissing her hand encased in autogloves.

“I think I know papa’s mind.”

“Tell me — O tell me!” again kissing the glove.

“No, I’ll not deprive you of that pleasure.”

He kissed her glove again.

“What do you kiss my glove for?”

He looked up and stared. His dazzling gray eyes had an uncertain hue of purple in them, and she thought his slender nose spoke in its animation.

“Where is your heart, O woman!”

“Where your sincerity is, O man!”

The lapse into silence had a savor of hostility in it; and there is no love Hague to which to appeal from the decision of the Martian Cupid who thrusts spears through naked hearts painted on upper corners of scented notepaper. As it seemed to him she stood intrenched behind her father, and she was absolutely confident of his opinion, and that opinion was not complimentary to him — so it seemed. It crossed his mind that probably she knew more .of him than he might like for her to know, while he is playing the Dr. Jekyl in the game. And she wondered if he could guess that her opinion of English lords in mass was not of the kind that had the unction of flattery in it. They dress well, regard good manners in the open as the sum and end of life, while at the same time they are in too many instances social criminals. Title is a passport to “good society” and the cloak for strange deeds and attitudes, and a license for selfishness.

As the Earl assisted her from the auto-car at the home at Walpole, a swift survey about the prospect and Acadie brought him the sense of munificent wealth and comfort. His mental comment was, “It’s worth while.” And in addition, the girl herself is so thoroughly American and so intensely alert mentally that she is “worth while” in herself.

He thought that on duly weighing the case he might in the end esteem Miss Wadsworth more for herself than for her financial excellences. But with no commercial qualities — well, there was one side to that “proposition.” Nevertheless she was a refreshing surprise to him, and certainly as his wife would not reproach him by undignified conversation. She was lovely as the rose, rare as the beryl, beautiful as Aphrodite, cultured beyond English nambypambys, rich as Rockefeller, or J. Pierpont Morgan, or Croesus, lively as a September cricket, deft and prompt in self-defense, and charming in her wooing or being wooed. He was confident she set the style of the love confidences and sharps and flats that had just passed between them. She was a real love rebel; she cut with a trenchant Damascus blade in her conventional love wars. It was her cleverness and perfect control that made one dread a contest with her. It in a way was like meeting a steel-clad Knight of feudal times, or a warrior like Captain Dalgetty. And her bearing in general was strong and decisive and modest. There were sweet, winning elements in her, something not definable, that all men admire in model femininity. Graceful and perfect in appearance, and noble in countenance, she won attention and admiration. The elasticity and audacity of her step suggested the force of the motor within. Medium in height, an atmosphere supremely Eveish, a superior sense of the relativity of things, a marked and irrepressible good humor, she was a lovely girl. The rotundity of the magazine-made face in vogue at this moment, was relieved in her case by an impression of a slight elongation obtained at a first swift sight. Hair black, with a pale tinge of Teutonic red in a certain angle of the sun ; complexion blond, merging or shading into the brunette; a rich, gentle voice, with no whine for unmerited sympathy in it; mind responsive, appreciative, logical, inventive; real kind and affectionate; abundant health, rose, and smile to correspond.

And the commanding summer residence on the knoll that tripped gently down into Walpole was a “thing of beauty and a joy forever. It was flanked by noble trees that were at this moment putting forth a wealth of green and loveliness, a fabled miracle of charm and life. The elevation was a point commanding a wide survey and far. The many angled and gabled Acadie, with picturesque side entrances, was decorated in the soft embrace of the Boston ivy, — some said the Japanese ivy. Large oriel windows above and below, and the small-mullioned windows as per late English taste, raised the impression that it was built for broad light and roomy air rather than the special sense of proportion and grace. But this sense was swept away on entering the house.