We Can\'t Have Everything

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Her heart stopped as if it had run into a tree. The "skip" brought
down on her soul a whole five-foot shelf of remembrances of her first
New York love-affair with the lame waiter in the bakery. All her good
fortune had been set in motion by poor, old, shabby "Skip." She had
soared away like some rainbow-hued bubble gently releasing itself
from the day pipe that inflated it out of the suds of its origin.

Kedzie had learned to be ashamed of Skip as long ago as when she was
a Greek dancer. She had not seen or heard of him since she sent him
the insulting answer to his stage-door note. And now he had saved
himself up for a ruinous reappearance when she was in the company
of a Marquess--and on such an errand!

What on earth was Skip doing so far from the Bronx and in the
environs of Newport, of all places? It occurred to Kedzie that
Skip might ask her the same question.

CHAPTER II

The terror his footsteps inspired was confirmed by the unforgetable
voice that came across her icy shoulder-blades. He slapped the china
and silver down with the familiar bravura of a quick-lunch waiter,
and her heart sank, remembering that she had once admired his skill.

The Marquess looked up at him with a glare of rebuke as Skip posed
himself patiently with one hand, knuckles down, on the table, the
other on his hip, and demanded, with misplaced enthusiasm:

"Well, folks, what's it goin' to be?"

The Marquess had been somewhat democratized by his life in the army,
and, being a true Briton, he always expected the worst in America.
He proceeded to order a light supper that would not take too long.
Skip crushed him by saying:

"Ain't the little lady takin' nothin'?"

Kedzie was afraid to speak. She put her finger on the menu at a
chafing-dish version of chicken, and the Marquess added it to his
order. Skip shuffled away without recognizing Kedzie. She waited
only for his exit to make her own.

It was terrifying enough to realize that the moment Skip caught
a glimpse of her he would hail her noisily and tell the Marquess
all about her. There still lingered in Kedzie a little more honesty
than snobbery and she felt even less dread of being "bawled out" by
a waiter in the presence of a Marquess than of having Skip Magruder
know that she was in such a place even with a Marquess. Skip had
been good to her and had counseled her to go straight.

She felt no gratitude toward him now, but she could not face his
contempt. That would be degradation beneath degradation. She was
disgusted with everything and everybody, including herself. The
glamour of the escapade was dissipated. The excitement of an illicit
amour so delicious in so many farces, so tenderly dramatic in so
many novels, had curdled. She saw what an ugly business she was in
and she was revolted.

Kedzie waited only to hear the swinging door whiff after Skip's
syncopated feet, then she whispered sharply across the table to
the Marquess:

"Take me out of this awful place. I don't know what I'm doing here.
I won't stay! not a moment!"

"But we've ordered--"

"You stay and eat, then. I won't stop here another minute!"

She rose. She smothered the Marquess's protests about the
awkwardness, the ludicrousness of such a flight.

"What will the waiter think?" he asked, being afraid of a waiter,
though of no one else.

Kedzie did not care what the waiter thought, so long as he did not
know whom he thought it of. Strathdene gave the headwaiter a bill
and followed Kedzie out. He was hungry, angry, and puzzled.

Skip Magruder never knew what a chaperon he had been. If Providence
managed the affair it chose an odd instrument, and intervened, as
usual, at the last moment. Providence would save itself a good deal
of work if it came round a little earlier in these cases. Perhaps it
does and finds nobody awake.

Strathdene demanded explanations. Kedzie told him truth but not
all of it.

"It suddenly swept over me," she gasped, "how horrible it was
for me to be there."

She wept with shame and when he would have consoled her she kept him
aloof. The astonishing result of the outing was that both came home
better. It suddenly swept over Strathdene that Kedzie was innocenter
than he had dreamed. She was good! By gad! she was good enough to be
the wife even of a Strathdene. He told Kedzie that he wished to God
he could marry her. She answered fervently that she wished to God he
could.

He asked her "You don't really love that Dyckman fella, do you?"

"I don't really love anybody but you," said Kedzie. "You are the
first man I have really truly loved."

She meant it and it may have been true. She said it with sincerity
at least. One usually does. At any rate, it sounded wonderful to
Strathdene and he determined to make her his. He would let England
muddle along somehow till he made this alliance with the beautiful
Missourienne. But Kedzie's plight was again what it had been; she
had a husband extra. In some cases the husband is busy enough with
his own affairs to let the lover trot alongside, like the third
horse which the Greeks called the _pareoros_. But neither Jim
nor Strathdene would be content with that sort of team-work, and
Kedzie least of all.

She and Strathdene agreed that love would find the way, and Kedzie
suggested that Jim would probably be decent enough to arrange the
whole matter. He had an awfully clever lawyer, too.

Strathdene had braved nearly every peril in life except marriage.
He was determined to take a shy at that. He and Kedzie talked their
honeymoon plans with the boyishness and girlishness of nineteen
and sixteen.

Then Kedzie remembered Gilfoyle. She had thanked her stars that she
told Dyckman the truth about him in time. And now she was confronted
with the same situation. Since her life was repeating its patterns,
it would be foolish to ignore the lessons. So after some hesitation
she told the Marquess that Jim Dyckman was not her first, but her
second. She told it very tragically, made quite a good story of it.

But the Marquess had been intrepid enough to laugh when, out of a
large woolly cloud a mile aloft, a German flying-machine had suddenly
charged him at a hundred miles an hour. He was calm enough now to
laugh at the menace of Kedzie's past rushing out of the pink cloud
about her.

"The more the merrier," he said. "The third time's the charm."

He sighed when he was alone and thought it rather shabby that Cupid
should land him at last with a second-handed, a third-hearted arrow.
But, after all, these were war times and Economy was the universal
watchword. The arrow felt very cozy.

CHAPTER III

Unselfishness is an acquired art. Children rarely have it. That is
why the Greeks represented love of a certain kind as a boy, selfish,
treacherous, ingratiating, blind to appearances, naif, gracefully
ruthless.

Kedzie and Strathdene were enamoured of each other. They were both
zealots for experience, restless and reckless in their zest of life.
As soon as they were convinced of their love, every restraint became
an illegal restraint, illegal because they felt that only the law of
love had jurisdiction over them.

When Kedzie received a telegram from Jim that he had secured a leave
of absence for thirty days and would be in Newport in four she felt
cruelly used. She forgot how she had angled for Jim and hustled him
into matrimony.

She was afraid of him now. She thought of him as many women in
captured cities once regarded and have recently again regarded
the triumphing enemy as one who would count beauty the best part
of the booty.

Her loyalty to Strathdene was compromised, her delicacy was
horrified. She was distraught with her plight.

She had to tell the news to Strathdene and he went into frenzies of
jealousy. She had pledged herself to be his as soon as she could lift
the Dyckman mortgage. If a man is ever going to be jealous he should
certainly find occasion for the passion when he is betrothed to the
wife of a returning soldier. Strathdene ought to have been on his way
back to the aviation-camp, but he had earned the right to humor his
nerves, and Kedzie was testing them beyond endurance.

It was a tragical-comical dilemma for Kedzie. Even she, with her
gift for self-forgiveness, could not quite see how she was to
explain prettily to her husband that in his absence she had fallen
in love with another man. Wives are not supposed to fall in love
while their husbands are at the wars. It has been done, but it is
hard to prettify.

Kedzie beat her forehead in vain for a good-looking explanation. She
was still hunting one when Jim came back. He telegraphed her that he
would come right through to Newport, and asked her to meet him at
the train. She dared not refuse. She simply could not keep her glib
promises to Strathdene. It seemed almost treason to the country for
a wife to give her warrior a cold welcome after his tropical service.
She met him at the Newport station. He was still in uniform. He had
taken no other clothes to Texas with him and had not stopped to buy
any. He was too anxious about his mother to pause in New York. He
had telegraphed his tailor to fit him out and his valet to pack his
things and bring them to Newport.

Kedzie found him very brown and gaunt, far taller even than she
remembered. She was more afraid of him than ever. Strathdene was
only a little taller than she. She was afraid to tell Jim that she
was another's.

But she made a poor mimicry of perfect bliss. Jim was not critical.
She was more beautiful than he remembered her. He told her so, and
she was flattered by his courtship, miserably treacherous as she
felt.

She was proud to be a soldier's wife. She was jealous now of his
concern for his mother. He had to go see her first. He was surprised
to learn that Kedzie was not living with her. His mother had begun
to improve from the moment she had Jim's telegram. But her eyes on
Kedzie were terrible.

Jim did not notice the tension. He was too happy. He was sick of
soldiering. His old uniform was like a convict's stripes. He was
childishly ambitious to get into long trousers again. For nearly
half a year he had buttoned his breeches at the knee and housed
his calves in puttees and his feet in army brogans.

It was like a Christmas morning among new toys for him to put on
mufti, and take it off. A bath-tub full of hot water was a paradise
regained. Evening clothes with a big white shirt and a top-hat were
robes of ascension. But the clothes made to his old measurements
were worlds too wide for his shrunk shanks. He had lost tons, he
said, in Texas.

Before daybreak the first morning he terrified his cellmate, Kedzie,
by starting up in his sleep with a gasp: "Was that reveille? My God,
I'll be late!"

The joy of finding himself no longer in a tent and of falling back
on his pillow was worth the bad dream. Life was one long bad dream
to Kedzie. She was guilty whichever way she turned, and afraid of
both men.

Jim had a valet to wait on him. He had the problem of selecting his
scarf and his socks for the morning. Jim had come into a lot of
money. He had been earning a bank clerk's salary, with no way of
spending it. And now he had a bank to spend and a plenty of places
to throw it.

But it was hard for him to believe that he was a free man again.
He was amazed to find Newport without cactus and without a scorpion.
He kept looking for a scorpion on his pillow. He found one there,
but did not recognize her.

Jim was as much of a parvenu in Newport as Kedzie had ever been. He
swept her away at times by his juvenile enthusiasm and she neglected
Strathdene atrociously for a week.

A large part of the colony had decamped for New York and Boston and
Chicago, but those that remained made a throng for Jim. His mother
was not well enough to be moved back to New York, but his sister
had reached England safely and he was happy in his luxuries.

But he was the only one that was. His mother was bitter against
Kedzie for having fed the gossips. Kedzie was assured that life
with Jim had nothing new to offer and she resented him as a barrier
between herself and the glory of her future with Strathdene and
"the stately homes of England."

Her mother and father arrived in Newport. Kedzie tried to suppress
them for fear that Strathdene might feel that they were the last
two back-breaking straws. But she needed a confidante and she told
her mother the situation.

Mrs. Thropp, like Kedzie, had an ambition that expanded as fast as
opportunity allowed. She was dazzled by the thought of being elevated
to the peerage. She supposed it made her a relative of royalty. She
who had once dreamed of being neighborly with the great Mrs. Dyckman
was now imagining herself exchanging crocheting formulas with Queen
Mary. She was saying she had always heard the Queen well spoke of.
And Adna Thropp spoke very highly of "George."

They agreed that it was their sacred duty to place the name of
Thropp as high as it could go, cost what it would.

"After all," said Adna one day, looking up from an article in a
Sunday paper--"after all, why ain't Thropp as likely a name as
Wettin? Or Hohenzollern? And what was Romanoff but an ordinary
family once?"

The only thing that seemed to stand in Kedzie's way was the odious
name of Dyckman.

"What's Dyckman, anyway?" said Mrs. Thropp. "Nothin' but a common
old Dutch name."

But how to shake it off was the problem. Kedzie had to cling to
Strathdene with one hand while she tried to release herself from
the Dyckmans with the other.

She had a dreadful feeling that she might lose them both if she
were not exceedingly careful and exceedingly lucky.

Help came to her unexpectedly from Charity Coe, unexpectedly,
though Charity was always helping Kedzie.

CHAPTER IV

Charity Coe had been tormented by the spectacle of her friend's wife
flirting recklessly with the young Marquess of Strathdene while her
husband was at the Border with the troops. But she was far more
sharply wrung when she saw Kedzie flirting with her husband, playing
the devoted wife with all her might and getting away with it to
perfection.

There is hardly anything our eyes bring us that is more hideous
than known disloyalty successfully masquerading as fidelity. The
Judas kiss is not to be surpassed in human detestation.

With almost all the world in uniform, Newport welcomed the sight
of one of her own men returned even from what was rather a siesta
than a campaign, and old Mrs. Noxon insisted on giving a big party
for Jim. She insisted so strongly that Kedzie did not dare refuse,
though she had vowed never to step inside the grounds where she had
made her Newport debut as a hired nymph.

Charity tried to escape by alleging a journey to New York, but
Mrs. Noxon browbeat her into staying. Charity did not know that
Strathdene was invited till she saw him come in with the crowd.
Neither did Kedzie. Old Mrs. Noxon may have invited him for spite
against Kedzie or just as an international courtesy to the most
distinguished foreigner in town.

She introduced Jim and the Marquess, saying, "You great warriors
should know each other."

Jim felt sheepish because he had been to no war and Strathdene
felt sheepish because Jim was so much taller than he. He looked up
at him as Napoleon looked enviously up at men who had no glory but
their altitude. Strathdene was also sheepish because Jim said, very
simply:

"Do you know my wife?"

If he had not been so tall that he saw only the top of Kedzie's
coiffure he would have seen that her face was splashed with red.
She mumbled something while Strathdene stammered, "Er--yes--I have
had that privilege." He felt a sinking sensation as deadly as when
he had his first fall at the aviation school.

Kedzie dragged Jim away and paid violent attention to him all
through dinner. Her sympathy was entirely for her poor Strathdene.
She was afraid he would commit suicide or return to England without
her, and she could not imagine how to get rid of Jim. Then she
caught sight of Charity Coe, and greeted her with a smile of
sincere delight.

For once Kedzie loved Charity. Suddenly it came upon her what a
beautiful solution it would be for everybody if Jim could take
Charity and leave Kedzie free to take Strathdene. She told herself
that Jim would be ever so much happier so, for the poor fellow
would suffer terribly when he found that his Kedzie really could
not pretend to love him any longer. Kedzie felt quite tearful over
it. She was an awfully good-hearted little thing. To turn him over
to Charity would be a charming arrangement, perfectly decent, and
no harm to anybody. If only the hateful laws did not forbid the
exchange--dog-on 'em, anyway!

The more Kedzie studied Charity the more suitable she seemed as
a successor. Her heart warmed to her and she forced an opportunity
to unload Jim on Charity immediately after dinner.

There was music for the encouragement of conversation, an
expensively famous prima donna and a group of strings brought
down from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The prima donna sang Donna Elvira's ferocious aria full of
indignation at discovering Don Giovanni's Don Juanity.

Charity, noting that Kedzie had flitted straight to Strathdene and
was trying to appease his cold rage, felt an envy of the prima donna,
who was enabled to express her feelings at full lung power with the
fortissimo reinforcement of several powerful musicians. The primeval
woman in Charity longed for just such a howling prerogative, but the
actual Charity was so cravenly well-bred that she dared not even say
to her dearest friend, "Jim, old man, you ought to go over and wring
the neck of that little cat of yours."

Jim sat beaming at Kedzie and Kedzie beamed back while she murmured
sweet everythings to her little Marquess. Jim seemed to imagine that
he had left her in such a pumpkin shell as Mr. Peter P. Pumpkineater
left his wife in, and kept her so very well. But Kedzie was not that
kind of kept or keepable woman.

Jim would have expected that if Kedzie were guilty of any spiritual
corruption it would show on her face. People will look for such
things. But she was still young and pretty and ingenuous and seemed
incapable of duplicity. And indeed such treachery was no more
than a childish turning from one toy to another. The traitors and
traitresses have no more sense of obligation than a child feels
for a discarded doll.

Jim paid Charity the uncomfortable compliment of feeling enough at
home with her to say, "Well, Charity, that little wife of mine takes
to the English nobility like a duck seeing its first pond, eh?"

"She seems to be quite at her ease," was all that Charity could
say. Now she felt herself a sharer in the wretched intrigue,
as treacherous as Kedzie, no better friend than Kedzie was wife,
because with a word she could have told Jim what he ought to have
known, what he was almost the only person in the room that did
not know. Yet her jaw locked and her tongue balked at the mere
thought of telling him. She protected Kedzie, and not Jim; felt
it abominable, but could not brave the telling.

She resolved that she would rather brave the ocean and get back
to Europe where there were things she could do.

The support of all the French orphans she had adopted had made
deep inroads in her income, but her conscience felt the deeper
inroads of neglected duty.

It was like Charity to believe that she had sinned heinously when
she had simply neglected an opportunity for self-sacrifice. When
other people applauded their own benevolence if they said, "How
the soldiers must suffer! Poor fellows!" Charity felt ashamed if
her sympathy were not instantly mobilized for action.

A great impatience to be gone rendered her suddenly frantic. While
she encouraged Jim to talk of his experiences in Texas she was
making her plans to sail on the first available boat.

If the boat were sunk by a submarine or a mine, death in the
strangling seas would be preferable to any more of this drifting
among the strangling problems of a life that held no promise of
happiness for her. She felt gagged with the silence imposed upon
her by the code in the very face of Kedzie's disloyalty, a
disloyalty so loathsome that seeing was hardly believing.

It seemed inconceivable that a man or woman pledged in holy matrimony
could ever be tempted to an alien embrace. And yet she knew dozens
of people who made a sport of infidelity. Her own husband had found
temptation stronger than his pledge. She wondered how long he would
be true to Zada, or she to him. Charity had suffered the disgrace of
being insufficient for her husband's contentment, and now Jim must
undergo the same disgrace with Kedzie. It was a sort of post-nuptial
jilt.

Of course Charity had no proof that Kedzie had been more than
brazenly indiscreet with Strathdene, but that very indifference
to gossip, that willingness to stir up slander, seemed so odious
that nothing could be more odious, not even the actual crime.

Besides, Charity found it hard to assume that a woman who held
her good name cheap would hold her good self less cheap, since
reputation is usually cherished longer than character.

In any case, Charity was smothering. Even Mrs. Noxon's vast
drawing-room was too small to hold her and Jim and Kedzie and
Strathdene. America was too strait to accommodate that jangling
quartet.

She rose abruptly, thrust her hand out to Jim and said:

"Good night, old man. I've got to begin packing."

"Packing for where? New York?"

"Yes, and then France."

"I've told you before, I won't let you go."

And then it came over him that he had no right even to be dejected
and alarmed at Charity's departure. Charity felt in the sudden
relaxing of his handclasp some such sudden check. She smiled
patiently and went to tell Kedzie good night.

Kedzie broke out, "Oh, don't go--yet!" then caught herself. She also
for quite a different reason must not regret Charity's departure.
Charity smiled a smile of terrifying comprehension, shook her head,
and went her ways.

And now Jim, released, wandered over and sat down by Kedzie just
as she was telling Strathdene the most important things.

She could not shake Jim. He would not talk to anybody else. She
wished that Charity had taken Jim with her. Strathdene was as
comfortable as a spy while Jim talked. Jim seemed so suspiciously
amiable that Strathdene wondered how much he knew.

Jim did not look like the sort of man who would know and be
complacent, but even if he were ignorant Strathdene was too
outright a creature to relish the necessity for casual chatter
with the husband of his sweetheart.

He, too, made a resolution to take the first boat available. He
would rather see a submarine than be one.

Strathdene also suddenly bolted, saying: "Sorry, but I've got to
run myself into the hangar. My doctor says I'm not to do any night
flying."

And now Kedzie was marooned with Jim. She was in a panic about
Strathdene; a fantastic jealousy assailed her. To the clandestine
all things are clandestine! What if he were hurrying away to meet
Charity? Charity returned to Kedzie's black books, and Jim joined
her there.

"Let's go home," said Kedzie, in the least honeymoony of tones.

Jim said, "All right, but why the sudden vinegar?"

"I hate people," said Kedzie.

"Are husbands people?" said Jim.

"Yes!" snapped Kedzie.

She smiled beatifically as she wrung Mrs. Noxon's hand and perjured
herself like a parting guest. And that was the last smile Jim saw
on her fair face that night.

He wondered why women were so damned unreasonably whimsical. They
may be damned, but there is usually a reason for their apparent
whims.

CHAPTER V

The next day Kedzie was still cantankerous, as it was perfectly
natural that she should be. She wanted to be a Marchioness and sail
away to the peerful sky. And she could not cut free from her anchor.
The Marquess was winding up his propeller to fly alone.

Jim, finding her the poorest of company, called on his mother. She
was well enough to be very peevish. So he left her and wandered about
the dull town. He had no car with him and he saw a racer that caught
his fancy. It had the lean, fleet look of a thoroughbred horse, and
the dealer promised that it could triple the speed limit. He went
out with a demonstrator and the car made good the dealer's word. It
ran with such zeal that Jim was warned by three different policemen
on the Boston Post Road that he would be arrested the next time he
came by in such haste.

He decided to try it out again at night on other roads. He told the
dealer to fill up the tank and see to the lights. The dealer told
the garage man and the garage man said he would.

That evening at dinner Jim invited Kedzie to take a spin. She said
that she had to spend the evening with her mother, who was miserable.
Jim said, "Too bad!" and supposed that he'd better run in and say
"Howdy-do" to the poor soul. Kedzie hastily said that she would be
unable to see him. She would not even let Jim ride her over in his
new buzz-wagon.

Again he made the profane comment to himself that women are
unreasonable. Again this statement was due to ignorance of an
excellent reason.