We Can\'t Have Everything

R >> Rupert Hughes >> We Can\'t Have Everything

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

"Oh, Wotton, I wanted to tell you that Mr. James Dyckman has
just brought us the news of his marriage."

Wotton's eyebrows went up and his hands sought each other and
whispered together as he faltered:

"Indeed, ma'am! That is a surprise, isn't it?"

"He has married a very brilliant young lady who has had great
success in--ah--in the--ah--moving pictures."

The old man gulped a moment, but finally got it down. "The moving
pictures! Indeed, ma'am! My wife and I are very fond of the--the
movies, as the saying is."

"Everybody is, isn't they--aren't they? Perhaps you have seen Miss
Anita Adair in the--er--pictures."

"Miss Anita Adair? Oh, I should say we 'ave! And is she the young
lady?"

"Yes. They are coming to live with us for a time."

"Oh, that will be very pleasant! Quite an honor, you might say--That
will make two extra at dinner, then?"

"Yes. No--that is, we were expecting Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler, but
I wish you would telephone them that I am quite ill--not very, you
understand--a bad cold, I think, would be best. Something to keep
me to my room for the day."

"Very good, ma'am. Was there anything else?"

"No--oh yes--ask Mrs. Abby to have the Louis Seize room made ready,
will you?"

"Very good--and some flowers, per'aps, I suppose."

"Yes."

"Thank you."

He shuffled out, bowed under the weight of the calamity, as if
he had an invisible trunk on his back. He gathered the servants
in solemn conclave in their sitting-room and delivered a funeral
oration over young Mr. Jim. There were tears in the eyes of the
women-servants and curses in the throats of the men. They all adored
Mr. Jim, and their recent pride in his triumph over Peter Cheever
was turned to ashes. He had married into the movies! They supposed
that he must have been drinkin' very 'ard. Jim's valet said:

"This is as good as handin' me my notice."

But, then, Dallam was a ratty soul and was for deserting a sinking
ship. Wotton and the others felt that their loyalty was only now to
be put to the test. They must help the old folks through it. There
was one ray of hope: such marriages did not last long in America.

CHAPTER VII

Jim hastened to Kedzie, and she greeted him with anxiety. She saw
by his radiant face that he brought cheerful news.

"I've seen mother," he exclaimed, "and she's tickled to death with
your picture. She wants to see you right away. She wouldn't listen
to anything but your coming right over to live at our house till
we decide what we want to do."

Kedzie's heart turned a somersault of joy; then it flopped.

"I've got no clothes fit for your house."

"Oh, Lord!" Jim groaned. "What do you think we are, a continual
reception? You can go out to-morrow and shop all you want to."

"We-ell, all ri-ight," Kedzie pondered.

Jim was taken aback at her failure to glow with his success; and
when she said, "I hate to leave momma and poppa," he writhed.

He had neither the courage nor the inclination to invite them to come
along and make a jolly house-party. There was room enough for a dozen
Thropps in the big house, but he doubted if there were room in his
mother's heart for three Thropps at a time, or for the elder Thropps
at any time. After all, his mother had some rights. He protected them
by lying glibly.

"My mother sent you her compliments, Mrs. Thropp, and said she would
call on you as soon as she could. She's very busy, you know--as I
told you. Well, come along, Kedzie. I'd like to have you home in
time for dinner."

"You dress for dinner, I suppose."

"Well, usually--yes."

"But I haven't--"

"If you dare say it, I'll murder you. What do they care what
you've got on? They want to meet you, not your clothes."

She saw that he was in no mood to be trifled with; so she delayed
only long enough to fling into a small trunk a few of her best duds.
She remembered with sudden joy that Ferriday had made her a gift of
one or two of the gowns Lady Powell-Carewe had designed for her
camera-appearances, and she took them along for her debut into the
topmost world. Jim arranged by telephone for the transportation of
her luggage, and they set out on their new and hazardous journey.

Kedzie bade her mother and father a farewell implying a beautiful
distress at parting. She thought it looked well, and she felt that
she owed to her mother her present splendor. She was horribly afraid,
too, of the ordeal ahead of her. She was, indeed, approaching one
of the most terrifying of duels: the first meeting of a mother and
a wife.

Kedzie was not half so afraid as the elder Dyckmans were; for she
had her youth and her beauty, and they were only a plain, fat old
rich couple whose last remaining son had been stolen from them by
a stranger who might take him from them altogether or fling him back
at their feet with a ruined heart.

In her moving pictures Kedzie had played the millionairess many
a time, had driven up in state to mansions, and been admitted by
moving-picture butlers with frozen faces and only three or four
working joints. She had played the millionairess in boudoir and
banquet-hall; she had been loved by nice princes and had foiled
wicked barons. She had known valets and grooms and footmen
familiarly; but they had all been moving-picture people, actors
like herself.

As the motor approached the Dyckman palace she recalled what Ferriday
had told her about how different real life in millionairedom was from
studio luxury, and she almost wished she had stayed married to Tommie
Gilfoyle.

In her terror she seized the usual armor that terror assumes--bluff.
It would have been far better for her and everybody if she had
entered meekly into the presence of the very human old couple at her
approach, and had said to them, not in so many words, but at least
by her simple manner:

"I did not select my birthplace or my parents, my soul or my body or
my environment. I am not ashamed of them, but I want to make the best
of them. I am a new-comer in your world and I am only here because
your son happened to meet me and liked me and asked me to marry him.
So excuse me if I am frightened and ill at ease. I don't want to take
him away from you, but I want to love you as he does and have you
love me as he does. So help me with your wisdom."

If she had brought such a message or implied it she would have walked
right into the living-room of the parental hearts. But poor Kedzie
lacked the genius and the inspiration of simplicity and frankness,
and she marched up the steps in a panic which she disguised all too
well in a pretense of scorn that proclaimed:

"I am as good as you are. I have been in dozens of finer homes than
this. You can't teach me anything, you old snobs. I've got your son,
and you'd better mind your p's and q's."

Wotton opened the door and put on as much of a wedding face as he
could. Jim saw that the old man was informed, and he said:

"This is Wotton, my dear. He's the real head of the house."

Kedzie might better have shaken hands with him than have given him
the curt nod she begrudged him. She looked past him to see Mrs.
Dyckman, in whose arms she found herself smothered. Mrs. Dyckman,
in her bride-fright, had rather rushed the situation.

Kedzie hardly knew what to do. She was overawed by the very bulk as
well as the prestige of her mother-in-law. She did not quite dare
to embrace Mrs. Dyckman, and she could think of nothing at all
to say.

Mrs. Dyckman was impressed with Kedzie's beauty and paid it
immediate tribute.

"Oh, but you are an exquisite thing! No wonder our boy is mad
about you."

Kedzie's heart pranced at this, and she barely checked the giggle
of triumph that bounded in her throat. But the only thing she could
think of was what she dared not say: "So you're the famous Mrs.
Dyckman! Why, you're fatter than momma." She said nothing, but wore
one of her most popular smiles, that look of wistful sweetness that
had melted countless of her movie worshipers.

She was caught from Mrs. Dyckman's shadow by Jim's father, who
said, "Don't I get a kiss?" and took one. Kedzie returned this
kiss and found the old gentleman very handsome, not in the least
like her father. Brides almost always get along beautifully with
fathers-in-law. And so do sons-in-law. Women will learn how to get
along together better as soon as it ceases to be so important to
them how they get along together.

After the thrill of the first collision the four stood in silenced
embarrassment till Jim, eager to escape, said:

"What room do we get?"

"Cicely's, if you like," his mother answered.

Jim was pleased. Cicely was the duchess of the family, and she and
her duke had occupied that room before they went to England. Cicely
was a war nurse now, bedabbled in gore, and her husband was a
mud-daubed major in the trenches along the Somme. Jim saw that his
mother was making no stint of her hospitality, and he was grateful.

He dragged Kedzie away. She was trying to take in the splendor of
the house without seeming to, and she went up the stairway with
her eyes rolling frantically.

In the Academy at Venice is that famous picture of Titian's
representing the little Virgin climbing up the steps of the Temple,
a pathetic, frightened figure bearing no trace of the supreme
radiance that was to be hers. There was something of the same
religious awe in Kedzie's heart as she mounted the steps of the
house that was a temple in her religion. She was going up to her
heaven already. It was perfection because it was the next thing.

When Kedzie reaches the scriptural heaven, if she does (and it will
be hard for Anybody to deny her anything that she sets her heart on),
she will be happy till she gets there and finds that she is only in
the first of the seven heavens. But what will the poor girl do when
she goes on up and up and up and learns at last that there is no
eighth? She will weep like another Alexander the Great, because
there are no more heavens to hope for.

Jim led her into the best room there was up-stairs, and told her
that a duke had slept there. At first she was thrilled through.
Later it would occur to her, not tragically, yet a bit quellingly,
that, after all, she had not married a duke herself, but only a
commoner. She had as much right to a title as any other American
girl. A foreign title is part of a Yankee woman's birthright.
Hundreds of women had acquired theirs. Kedzie got only a plain
"Mr."

Still, she told herself that she must not be too critical, and she
let her enthusiasm fly. She did not have to pose before Jim, and
she ran about the suite as about a garden.

CHAPTER VIII

Kedzie was smitten with two facts: the canopied bed was raised on
a platform, and the marble bath-tub was sunk in the floor. She sat
on the bed and bounced up and down on the springs. She stared up
at the tasseled baldachin with its furled draperies, and fingered
the lace covering and the silken comforter.

She sat in the best chairs, studied the dressing-table with its
royal equipment. She went to the window and gazed out into Fifth
Avenue, reviewing its slow-flowing lava of humanity--young royalty
overlooking her subjects.

Mrs. Abby, the housekeeper, knocked and came in to be presented to
the new Princess of Wales, and to present the personal maid who had
been assigned to her. Even Mrs. Dyckman was afraid of Mrs. Abby,
who lacked the suavities of Wotton. Mrs. Abby gave Kedzie the chill
of her life, and Kedzie responded with an ardent hatred.

The maid, a young Frenchwoman, found her black dress with its black
silk apron an appropriate uniform, since her father, three brothers,
a dozen cousins, and two or three of her sweethearts were at the
wars. Some of them were dead, she knew, and the others were on their
way along the red stream that was bleeding France white, according
to German hopes.

Liliane, being a foreigner, saw in Kedzie the pathos of the alien,
and with the unequaled democracy of the French, forgave her her
plebeiance for that sake. She welcomed Kedzie's beauty, too,
and regarded her as a doll of the finest ware, whom it would be
fascinating to dress up. Kedzie and Liliane would prosper famously.

Liliane resolved that when Kedzie appeared at dinner she should
reflect credit not only on "Monsieur Zheem," but on Liliane as well.
When Kedzie's trunk arrived and Liliane drew forth the confections
of Lady Powell-Carewe she knew that she had all the necessary
weapons for a sensation.

Kedzie felt more aristocracy in being fluttered over by a French
maid with an accent than in anything she had encountered yet.
Liliane's phrase "Eef madame pair-meet" was a constant tribute
to her distinction.

Jim retired to his own dressing-room and faced the veiled contempt
of his valet, leaving Kedzie to the ministrations of Liliane, who
drew the tub and saw that it was just hot enough, sprinkled the
aromatic bath-salts, and laid out the towels and Kedzie's things.

Women are born linen-lovers, and Kedzie was not ashamed to have
even a millionaire maid see the things she wore next to her skin,
and Liliane was delighted to find by this secret wardrobe that
her new mistress was beautifully equipped.

She waited outside the door till Kedzie had stepped from the fragrant
pool--then came in to aid in the harnessing. She saw nothing but
the successive garments and had those ready magically. She laced
the stays and slid the stockings on and locked the garters and set
the slippers in place. She was miraculously deft with Kedzie's hair,
and her suggestions were the last word in tact. Then she fetched
the dinner-gown, floated it about Kedzie as delicately as if it
were a ring of smoke, hooked it, snapped it, and murmured little
compliments that were more tonic than cocktails.

When Jim came in he was struck aglow by Kedzie's comeliness and by
a certain authority she had, Liliane pointed to her, as an artist
might point to a canvas with which he has had success, and demanded
his admiration. His eyes paid the tribute his lips stammered over.

Kedzie was incandescent with her triumph, and she went down the
stairway to collect her dues.

Her parents-in-law were waiting, and she could see how tremendously
they were impressed and relieved by her grace. What did it matter who
she was or whence she came? She was as irresistible as some haunting
phrase from a folk-song, its authorship unknown and unimportant, its
perfection inspired.

Kedzie floated into the dining-room and passed the gantlet of the
servants. Ignoring them haughtily, she did not ignore the sudden
change of their scorn to homage. Nothing was said or done; yet the
air was full of her victory. Much was forgiven her for her beauty,
and she forgave the whole household much because of its surrender.

It was a family dinner and not elaborate. Mr. and Mrs. Dyckman
had arrived at the stage when nearly everything they liked to eat
or drink was forbidden to them. Jim had an athlete's appetite for
simples, and Kedzie had an actress' dread of fattening things and
sweets. There was a procession of dishes submitted to her inspection,
but seeing them refused first by Mrs. Dyckman, she declined most
of them in her turn.

Kedzie had been afraid that she would blunder in choice among a
long array of forks, but she escaped the test, since each course
was accompanied by the tools to eat it with. There was a little
champagne to toast the bride in.

She found the grandeur of the room belittling to the small party at
table. There were brave efforts to make her feel at home and brief
sallies of high spirits, but there was no real gaiety. How could
there be, when there was no possible congeniality? The elder couple
had lived in a world unknown to Kedzie. Their son had dazed them by
his sudden return with a strange captive from beyond the pale. She
was a pretty barbarian, but a barbarian she was, and no mistake.
She was not so barbaric as they had feared, but they knew nothing
of her past or of her.

It is not good manners to deal in personal questions; yet how else
could such strangers come to know one another? The Dyckmans were
afraid to quiz her about herself, and she dared not cross-examine
them. They had no common acquaintances or experiences to talk over.
The presence of the servants was depressing, and when the long meal
was over and the four Dyckmans were alone in the drawing-room, they
were less at ease than before. They had not even knives and forks
to play with.

Mrs. Dyckman said at length, "Are you going to the theater, do
you think?"

Jim did not care--or dare--to take his bride abroad just yet.
He shook his head. Mrs. Dyckman tried again:

"Does your wife play--or sing, perhaps?"

"No, thank you," said Kedzie, and sank again.

Mrs. Dyckman was about to ask if she cared for cards, but she was
afraid that she might say yes. She grew so desperate at last that
she made a cowardly escape:

"I think we old people owe it to you youngsters to leave you alone."
She caught up her husband with a glance like a clutching hand, and
he made haste to follow her into the library.

Jim and Kedzie looked at each other sheepishly. Kedzie was taking
her initiation into the appalling boredom that can close down in
a black fog on the homes and souls of the very wealthy. She was
astounded and terrified to realize that there is no essential delight
attending the possession of vast means. Later she was to find herself
often one of large and glittering companies where nothing imaginable
was lacking to make one happy except the power to be happy. She would
go to dinners where an acute melancholia seemed to poison the food,
where people of the widest travel and unfettered opportunities could
find nothing to say to one another.

If she had loved Jim more truly, or he her, they could have been
blissful in spite of their lack of hardships; but the excitement of
flirtation had gone out of their lives. There seemed to be nothing
more to be afraid of except unhappiness. There seemed to be nothing
to be excited about at all. Time would soon provide them with wild
anxieties, but he withheld his hand for the moment.

Jim saw that Kedzie was growing restless. He dragged himself from
his chair and clasped her in his arms, but the element of pity in
his deed took all the fire out of it. He led her about the house
and showed her the pictures in the art gallery, but she knew nothing
about painters or paintings, and once around the gallery finished
that room for her forever. There were treasures in the library to
fascinate a bibliophile for years, but Kedzie knew nothing and cared
less about books as books; and a glance into the somber chamber where
the old people played cards listlessly drove her from that door.

The dinner had begun at eight and finished at half past nine. It was
ten o'clock now, and too late to go to the theater. The opera season
was over. There would be the dancing-places, but neither of the two
felt vivacity enough for dancing or watching others dance.

For lack of anything better, Jim proposed a drive. He was mad for
air and exercise. He would have preferred a long walk, and so would
Kedzie, but she could not have walked far without changing her
costume and her slippers.

She was glad of the chance to escape from the house. Jim rang for
Wotton and asked to have a car brought round. They put on light
wraps and went down the steps to the limousine.

The Avenue was lonely and the Park was lonelier. And, strangely, now
that they were together in the dark they felt happier; they drew more
closely together. They were common people now, and they had moonlight
and stars, a breeze and a shadowy landscape; they shared them with
the multitude, and they were happy for a while.

Something in Kedzie's heart whispered: "What's the use of being rich?
What's the good of living in a palace with a gang of servants hanging
over your shoulder? Happiness evidently doesn't come from ordering
whatever you want, for by the time somebody brings it to you you
don't want it any longer. Happiness must be the going after something
yourself and being anxious about it."

If she had listened to that airy whisperer she might have had an
inkling of a truth. But she dismissed philosophy as something stupid.
She turned into Jim's arms like a child afraid and clung to him,
moaning:

"Jim, what do I want? Tell me. I'm bluer than blue, and I don't know
why."

This was sufficiently discouraging for Jim. He had given the petulant
child the half of his kingdom, and she was blue. If anything could
have made him bluer than he was it would have been this proclamation
of his failure. He had done the honorable thing, and it had profited
nobody.

He petted her as one pets a spoiled and fretful child at the end of
a long, long rainy day, with a rainy to-morrow ahead.

When they returned home the coziness of their hour together was lost.
The big mansion was as cozy as a court-house. It no longer had even
novelty. Climbing the steps had no further mystery than the Louvre
has to an American tourist who has promenaded through it once.

Her room was brilliant and beautiful, but the things she liked about
it most were the homely, comfortable touches: her bedroom slippers by
her chair, her nightgown laid across her pillow, and the turned-down
covers of the bed.

Liliane knocked and came in, and Jim retreated. It was pleasant for
the indolent Kedzie to have the harness taken from her. She yawned
and stretched and rubbed her sides when her corsets were off, and
when her things were whisked from sight and she was only Kedzie
Thropp alone in a nightgown she was more nearly glad than she had
been for ever so long.

She flung her hair loose and ran about the room. She sang grotesquely
as she brushed her teeth and scumbled her face with cold-cream,
rubbed it in and rubbed it out again. She was so glad to be a mere
girl in her own flesh and not much else that she went about the room
crooning to herself. She peeked out of the window at the Avenue, as
quiet as a country lane at this hour, save for the motors that slid
by as on skees and the jog-trot of an occasional hansom-horse.

She was crooning when she turned to see her husband come in in a
great bath-robe; he might have been a solemn monk, save for the big
cigar he smoked.

He was so dour that she laughed and ran to him and flung him into
a chair and clambered into his lap and throttled him in her arms,
crying:

"Oh, Jim, I am happy. I love you and you love me. Don't we?
Say we do!"

"Of course we do," he laughed, not quite convinced.

He could not resist her beauty, her warmth, her ingratiation. But
somehow he could not love her soul.

He had refused to make her his mistress before they were married.
Now that they were married, that was all he could make of her.
Their life together was thenceforward the life of such a pair. He
squandered money on her and let her squander it on herself. They
had ferocious quarrels and ferocious reconciliations, periods of
mutual aversion and tempests of erotic extravagance, excursions
of hilarious good-fellowship, hours of appalling boredom.

But there was a curious dishonesty about their relation: it was
an intrigue, not a communion. They were never closer to each other
than a reckless flirtation. Sometimes that seemed to be enough
for Kedzie. Sometimes she seemed to flounder in an abyss of gloomy
discontent.

But sleep was sweet for her that first night in the bed where
the duchess had lain. She had an odd dream that she also became
a duchess. Her dreams had a way of coming true.

CHAPTER IX

So there lay Kedzie Thropp of Nimrim, Missouri, the Girl Who Had
Never Had Anything. At her side was the Man Who Had Always Had
Everything. Under this canopy a duke and duchess had lain.

There was an element of faery in it; yet far stranger things have
happened and will happen anew.

There was once a Catholic peasant of Lithuania who died of the
plague, leaving a baby named Martha Skovronsky. A Protestant preacher
adopted the waif, and while she was yet a girl got rid of her by
marrying her to a common Swedish soldier, a sergeant. The Russians
bombarded the town; the Swedes fled; and a Russian soldier captured
the deserted wife in the ruins of, the city. He passed her on to his
marshal. The marshal sold her as a kind of white slave to a prince;
the prince took her to Russia as his concubine. Being of a liberal
disposition, he shared her capacious heart with the young czar, who
happened to be married. Martha Skovronsky bore him a daughter and
won his heart for keeps. He had her baptized in the Russian Church
as Catherine. He divorced his czaritza that he might marry the
foundling. He set on his bride's head the imperial crown studded
with twenty-five hundred gems. She became the Empress Catherine I.
of Russia and went to the wars with her husband, Peter the Great,
saved him from surrendering to the Turks, and made a success of a
great defeat for him.

He loved her so well that when she was accused of flirting with
another man he had the gentleman decapitated and his head preserved
in a jar of alcohol as a mantel ornament for Catherine's room. When
he died she reigned in his stead, recalling to her side as a favorite
the prince who had purchased her when she was a captive.