We Can\'t Have Everything

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Her second husband had been very philosophical about her career and
had taken the news of her previous marriage with disgusting stoicism.
Finally he had gone to the Mexican Border for an indefinite stay,
leaving her to her own devices and the devices of any man who came
along. It was too much like leaving a diamond outdoors: it cheapened
the diamond.

But Strathdene--ah, Strathdene! He turned blue at the mention of
Kedzie's husband. When Jim came back from Texas and Kedzie had to be
polite to him Strathdene almost had hydrophobia. He accused Kedzie of
actually welcoming Jim. He charged her with polyandry. He threatened
to shoot her and her husband and himself. He comported himself unlike
any traditional Englishman of literature. He was, in fact, himself
and what he did was like him. He was a born aviator. His heart was
used to racing at unheard-of speeds. He could sustain superhuman
exaltations and depressions.

Being in love with him was like going up in an airship with him,
which was one of Kedzie's ambitions for the future. She dreamed of
a third honeymoon _in excelsis._

Strathdene told her that if she ever looked at another man after she
married him he would take her up ten thousand feet in the clouds, set
his airship on fire, and drop with her as one cinder into the ocean.
What handsomer tribute could any woman ask of a man? He was a lover
worth fighting for.

But she had felt uncertain of winning him till that wonderful morning
when Jim did not come back home. She woke up early all by herself and
heard the valet answer Jim's call from Viewcrest.

She had made a friend of Dallam by her flirtation with the nobility.
The poor fellow had suffered tortures from the degradation of his
master's alliance with a commoner like Kedzie until Kedzie developed
her alliance with the Marquess. Then his valetic soul expanded again.

He looked upon her as his salvation.

Over the telephone she heard him now promising Jim that he would
not tell Kedzie. If Jim's old valet, Jules, had not gone to France
and his death he would have saved Jim from infernal distresses, but
this substitute had a malignant interest in his master's confusion.
Dallam proceeded forthwith to rap at Mrs. Dyckman's door and spoke
through it, deferentially:

"Beg pardon, ma'am, but could I have a word?"

Kedzie wrapped herself in a bath-robe and opened the door a chink to
hear the rest of what she had heard in part. The valet had no collar
on and his overnight beard not off, and he, too, was in a bath-robe.
Man and mistress stood there like genius and madness, "and thin
partitions did their bounds divide."

"Very sorry to trouble you, ma'am," he said, "but I'm compelled to.
The master has just telephoned me that his car broke down at the
Viewcrest Inn out Tiverton way, and he wants his morning clothes,
and also--if you'll pardon me, ma'am--he instructed me to send him
a long motor-coat of yours and a large hat and your limousine. I was
directed not to--ahem--to trouble you about it, ma'am, but I 'ardly
dared."

He helped her out so perfectly that she had no need to say anything
more than, "Quite right."

She was glad that the door screened her from observation, for
she went through a crisis of emotions, wrath and disgust at Jim's
perfidy _versus_ ecstasy and gratitude to him for it.

She beat her breast with her hand as if to keep her trembling heart
from turning a somersault into her mouth. Then she spoke with a calm
that showed how far she had traveled in self-control.

"Very good. You were quite right. Call the chauffeur and tell him
to bring round my closed car. Then send me my maid and have the cook
get me some coffee. Then you may telephone my mother and father and
ask them to come over at once. Please send my car for them. You might
have coffee for them also. For we'll all be riding out to--did you
say Viewcrest Inn?"

"Yes, ma'am. Very good, ma'am. Thank you!"

He went away thinking to himself. He thought in cockney: "My Gawd!
w'at a milit'ry genius! She dictites a horder loike a Proosian
general. I'm beginnin' to fink she's gowing to do milord the mokkis
prahd. There's no daht abaht it. Stroike me, if there is."

By the time Kedzie was dressed and coffeed her panicky father
and mother were collected and fed, and she had selected her best
motor-coat for the shroud of whatever woman it was at Viewcrest.
She dared not dream it was Charity.

She had time enough to tell her parents all there was to tell on
the voyage, but she had no idea that her limousine was taking her
to the very inn that Strathdene had lured her to on that night when
he tested her worthiness of his respect.

It had been dark on that occasion and she had been in such a chaos
that she had paid no heed to the name of the place or the dark roads
leading thither.

She almost swooned when she reached the Viewcrest Inn and found
herself confronted by Skip Magruder. And so did Skip. He had not
recognized the back of her head before, but her face smote him now.
There was no escaping him. Her beauty was enriched by her costume
and her mien was ripened by experience, but she was unforgetably
herself. He was still a waiter, and the apron he had on and the
napkin he clutched might have been the same one he had when she
first saw him.

When he saw her now again he gasped the name he had known her by:
"Anitar! Anitar Adair! Well, I'll be--"

Then his face darkened with the memory of disprized love. He
recalled the cruel answer, "Nothing doing," that she had indorsed
on the stage-door letter he sent her long ago.

But the military genius that had guided Kedzie this morning inspired
her still. She was not going to lose her victory for any flank attack
from an ally in ambush. She sent out a flag of truce.

"Why, Skip!" she cried. "Dear old Skip! I want you to meet my father
and mother. Mr. Magruder was terribly kind to me when I was alone
and friendless in New York."

Mrs. Thropp had outgrown waiters and even Adna regretted the
reversion to Nimrim that led him to shake hands and say, "Please
to meecher."

The stupefied proprietor of the inn was begging for explanations of
this unheard-of colloquy, but Skip flicked him away with his napkin
as if he were a bluebottle fly and motioned Kedzie to a corner of
the office. Kedzie explained, breathlessly:

"Skip, I'm in terrible trouble, and I'm so glad to find you here,
for you never failed me. I was very rude to you when you sent me
that note, but I--I was engaged to be married at the time and I
didn't think it proper to see anybody. And--well, I'm getting my
punishment now, for my husband is here with a strange woman--and--oh,
it's terrible, Skip! My heart is broken, but you've got to help me.
I know I can rely on you, can't I, dear old Skip?"

The girl was so efficient that she almost deserved her success. It
cost her something, though, to beguile a waiter with intimate appeals
that she might earn a title. But then in time of war no ally is to be
scorned and the lowliest recruit is worth enlisting. A Christian can
piously engage a Turk to help him whip another Christian.

When Kedzie pulled out the tremolo stop and looked up, big-eyed,
and pouted at him, Skip was hers.

"Your husband, Anitar? Your husband here? Why, the low-life hound!
I'll go up and kill him for you if you want me to."

Kedzie explained that she didn't want to get her dear Skip into
any trouble, but she did want his help. Skip found her a good
boarding-place the first time he met her, and now she had to dupe
him into securing her furnished rooms and board in a castle. She may
have rather encouraged him to imagine that once she was free from
Jim she would listen once more to Skip. But there is no evidence on
that point and he must have felt a certain awe of her. His pretty
duckling had become so gorgeous a swan.

Her parley with Skip had delayed her march up-stairs to the attack,
but Jim and Charity could only wait in befuddled suspense, unwilling
and afraid to attempt a flight.

Kedzie went up-stairs at last, backed by her father and mother and
Skip and the chauffeur with the suit-case of Jim's clothes. Kedzie
was dazed at the sight of Charity.

But there was no need of any oration.

After a little sniffing and nodding of the head she spoke:

"Well, I thought as much! Jim, you telephoned for some things
of mine and of yours. Here they are. There's a can of gasolene
down-stairs for you. Here's your suit-case, and the coat and hat
for Mrs. Cheever. I presume you will go back in your own car."

Jim nodded.

"Then we needn't keep you any longer. Mr. McNiven is your lawyer
still, I suppose. I'll send my lawyer to him. Come along,
mother--and father."

She led her little cohort down-stairs and bade Skip a very cordial
_au revoir._

CHAPTER VIII

The Dyckman divorce farce might have been as politely performed
as _l'affaire Cheever_--or even more so than that, since
practice makes perfect. At least a temporary secrecy could have
been secured with leisureliness by a residence in another State.

But Kedzie felt as Zada did, that she simply could not wait, though
her reason was well to the opposite. Zada had been afraid that a
child would arrive before the divorce, but Kedzie that a gentleman
would depart.

Strathdene was straining at the anchor like one of his own biplanes
with the wind nudging its wings. In Europe they were shooting down
airships by the score nearly every day and Strathdene wanted to go
back. "It's not fair to the Huns," he said. "They haven't had a
pot-shot at me for so long they'll forget I was ever over. And some
of those men that were corporals when I made my Ace, are Aces now
as well and they're crawling up on my score! I'll have to fly all
the time to catch up."

But he wanted to take with him his beauty. He was jealous of Uncle
Sam and afraid to trust Kedzie to him. The more inconvenient she
became to him the more determined he grew to overcome the obstacles
to her possession.

He abominated the necessity of taking his bride through the side
door of the court-house to the altar, but he would not give her up.
It looked, however, as if he would have to. And then he received
mysteriously an assignment to the inspection of flying-machines
purchased in the American market. Kedzie told him that it was a
Heaven-sent answer to her prayers, and he believed it.

But it was his poor mother's work; she had written to a friend in
the British Embassy imploring him to keep her precious boy out of
France as long as possible. Hecatombs of gallant young lords were
being butchered and she had lost a son, two brothers, a nephew,
and unnumbered friends. The whole nobility of Europe was as deep
in mourning as all the other grades of prestige. She wanted a brief
respite from terror. She did not know till later to what further
risks she was exposing her boy.

Kedzie was grimly resolute about getting her freedom from Jim in
order to transfer it to Strathdene. She planned to manage it quietly
for the sake of her own future. But a sickening mess was made of it.
For Kedzie fell into the hands of a too, too conscientious lawyer.
It is impossible to be loyal in all directions, and young Mr. Anson
Beattie was loyal first to his wife and children, whom he loved
devotedly. They needed money and clients came slowly to him.

His wife had relatives in Newport and they chanced to be visiting
there. The relatives were shopkeepers, to whom Pet Bettany owed
much money. That was how Kedzie came to consult Mr. Beattie. Kedzie
telephoned Pet the moment she got back from the Viewcrest Inn,
and Pet told her of Beattie.

When Kedzie drifted into his ken with a word of introduction from
Pet Bettany he hailed her as a Heaven-sent messenger. She brought
him advertisement, and big fees on a platter.

The very name of Dyckman was incense and myrrh. Mr. Beattie smelled
gold. When Kedzie poured out her story and explained that the famous
Mrs. Charity Cheever was the wreckress of her home Mr. Beattie saw
head-lines everywhere.

If the Dyckmans had been a humble couple he would have tried to
reconcile them, perhaps, or he would have separated them with little
noise. But it was noise he wanted. The longer and louder the trial
the more free space Mr. Beattie would get.

"It Pays to Advertise" is a necessary motto for all professions.
The lawyer is advertised by his hating enemies, Beattie said to
himself, and to his ecstatic wife when he went to her room after
Kedzie left. His wife would never have taken a divorce if divorces
were distributed at every door like handbills. Mr. Beattie said to
Mrs. Beattie:

"Soul o' my soul, I'm going to handle this case in such a way that
it will stir up a smell from here to California. I'll get that little
woman an alimony that will break all known records and I'll take
a percentage of the gate receipts as they come in. I wouldn't trust
my little client a foot away."

"Don't trust her too close, either," said his devoted spouse, who
was just jealous enough to be remembered in time of stress.

Beattie was the sort of lawyer one reads about oftener than one
meets, and he wanted to be read about. He had the almost necessary
lawyer gift of beginning to hate the opposition as soon as he
learned what it was. If Jim had engaged him he would have hated
Kedzie with religious ardor. Kedzie engaged him; so he abominated
Jim and everybody and everything associated with him from his name
to his scarf-pin.

He warned Kedzie not to spend an hour under Jim Dyckman's roof, lest
she seem to condone what she discovered. He advised her to disappear
till Beattie was ready to strike.

That was the reason why there was no compromise, no concession, no
politeness in the divorce. If collusion is vicious this case was
certainly pure of it.

Jim was not permitted a quiet talk with Kedzie from the moment she
found him at the Viewcrest Inn. Her arrival there plus her family had
thrown him into a stupor. It was a situation for a genius to handle,
since the honester a man is the more he is confused at being found
in a situation that looks dishonest. Jim was never less a genius than
then. Even Charity, who usually found a word when a word was needed,
said not one. What could she say? Kedzie ignored her, accused her of
nothing, and did not linger.

When Jim and Charity, left alone together again, looked at each
other they were too disgusted to regret that they had not been as
guilty as they looked. Life had the jaundice in their eyes.

But they had to get back to the world by way of material things.
Jim had to change his evening clothes. He asked Charity to wait in
the office below. He pointed to the motor-coat and hat that Kedzie
had brought and tossed on a lounge.

Charity recoiled from wearing Kedzie's cast-off clothes or from
disguising as Jim's wife, but her downcast eyes revealed her bare
shoulders and arms and her delicate evening gown. They had been
exquisitely appropriate to night and night lights, but they were
ghastly in the day.

She put on Kedzie's mantle; it blistered her like the mantle Medea
sent to her successor in her husband's love. She sat in the office
and some of the guests passed through. She could see that they took
her to be one of their sort, and shocks of red and white alternated
through her skin.

When Jim was ready he came down with his evening clothes in the
suit-case. The baggage was the final convincing touch. He picked
up the gasolene-can and toted it that weary mile. One of the hotel
servants offered to carry it, but Jim was in no mood for company.
There are things that the wealthiest man does not want to have done
for him.

They found the car studded with pools of water from the rain, and
Charity shook out the cushions while Jim filled up the tank.

"Quite domestic," said Charity, in the last dregs of bitterness.

Jim did not answer. He flung the can over into a field and hopped
into the car. He regretted that he had no spurs to dig into its
sides, no curb bit to jerk. He owed his destruction to that car.
For want of gasolene, the car was lost; for want of the car, a
reputation was lost.

He thought with frenzy as he drove. He had little imagination, but
it did not require an expert dreamer to foresee dire possibilities
ahead. He was so sorry for Charity that he could have wept. He
wanted to enfold her in his arms and promise her security. He wanted
to stand in front of her and take in his own breast all the arrows
of scorn that might shower upon her.

But the nearest approach to protection in his power lay along the
lines of appearing to be indifferent to her. He had not been told of
Kedzie's infatuation for Strathdene and he had not suspected it.

Charity was tempted to refer to it, but she felt that it would be
contemptibly petty at the moment. So Jim was permitted to hope that
he could find Kedzie, throw himself on her mercy and implore her to
believe in his innocence. It was a sickly hope, and his heart filled
with gall and with hatred of Kedzie and all she had brought on him.

He reached Newport with a terrific speed, and left Charity at Mrs.
Noxon's to make her own explanations. Mrs. Noxon had defended Charity
against gossip once before, but to defend her against appearances was
too much to ask.

"Well-behaved people," she told Charity, "do not have appearances."

She was so cold that Charity froze also, and set her maid to packing.
Mrs. Noxon's frigidity was a terrifying example of what she was to
expect. She returned to New York on the first train. Jim was on it,
too.

He had sped home, expecting to find Kedzie. She was gone and none
of the servants knew where. If he had found her in the ferocious
humor he had arrived at he might have given her the sort of divorce
popular in divorce-less countries, where they annul the wife instead
of the marriage. He might have sent Kedzie to the realm where there
is neither marrying nor giving in marriage--which should save a heap
of trouble.

Jim fancied that Kedzie must have taken the train to New York, since
she spoke of sending her lawyer to McNiven. It did not occur to him
that she could find a New York lawyer in Newport.

He met Charity, and not Kedzie, on the train. That made bad look
worse. But it gave Jim and Charity an opportunity to face the
calamity that was impending. Jim tried to reassure Charity that he
would keep her from suffering any public harm. The mere thought of
her liability to notoriety, the realization that her long life of
decency and devotion were at the mercy of the whim of a woman like
Kedzie, drove her frantic.

She begged Jim to leave her to her thoughts and he went away to the
purgatory of his own. Reaching New York, he returned to Charity to
offer his escort to her home. She broke out, petulantly:

"Don't take me any more places, Jim. I beg you!"

"Forgive me," he mumbled, and relieved her of his compromising
chivalry.

They went to their homes in separate taxicabs. Jim made haste to
his apartment. Kedzie was not there and had not been heard from.

Late as it was, he set out on a telephone chase for McNiven and
dragged him to a conference. It was midnight and Jim was haggard
with excitement.

There are two people at least to whom a wise man tells the truth--his
doctor and his lawyer. Neither of them has many illusions left, but
both usually know fact when they get a chance to face it.

Jim had nothing to conceal from McNiven and his innocence transpired
through all his bewilderment. He told just what had happened in its
farcical-funeral details. McNiven did not smile. Jim finished with
all his energy:

"Sandy, you know that Charity is the whitest woman on earth, a saint
if ever there was a saint. She's the one that's got to be protected.
Not a breath of her name must come out. If it takes the last cent
I've got and dad's got I want you to buy off that wife of mine. You
warned me against marrying her, and I wish to God I'd listened to
you. I'm not blaming her for being suspicious, but I can't let her
smash Charity. I'll protect Charity if I have to build a wall of
solid gold around her."

McNiven tried to quiet him. He saw no reason for alarm. "You don't
have to urge me to protect Charity," he said. "She's an angel as well
as my client. All you need is a little sleep. Go to bed and don't
worry. Remember, there never was a storm so big that it didn't blow
over."

"Yes, but what does it blow over before it blows over?" said Jim.

"You're talking in your sleep already. Good night," said McNiven.

CHAPTER IX

The next morning McNiven found Charity at his office when he
arrived. She had evidently been awake all night.

She told McNiven a story that agreed in the essentials with Jim's
except that she made herself out the fool where he had blamed
himself. McNiven had no success in trying to quiet her with soothing
promises of a tame conclusion. She dreaded Kedzie.

"If it were just an outburst of jealousy," she said, "you might talk
to the woman. But she's not jealous of her husband. She was as cool
as a cucumber when she found us together. She was glad of it, because
she had got a way to get her Marquess now. She's ambitious and Lady
Macbeth couldn't outdo her."

She told McNiven what she had not had the heart to tell Jim about
Strathdene. It worried him more than he admitted. While he meditated
on a measure to meet this sort of attack, Charity suggested one.
It was drastic, but she was desperate. She proposed the threat of
a countercharge against Kedzie.

McNiven shook his head and made strange noises in his pipe. He
asked for evidence against Kedzie. Charity could only quote the
general opinion.

McNiven said: "No. You allege innocence on your part in spite of
appearances which you admit are almost conclusive. You can hardly
claim that more innocent appearances on her part prove that she is
guilty. Besides, we don't want to stir up any more sediment. We'll
do everything on the Q. T. Money talks, and the little lady is not
deaf. My legal advice to you is, 'Don't fret,' and my medical advice
is, 'Go to bed and stay there till I send you word that it's all
over.' Remember one thing, there never was a storm so big that it
didn't blow over."

Charity was not in the least quieted. His sedative only annoyed
her ragged nerves.

"Keep my name clean," she whispered.

As she rode home in a taxicab that was like a refrigerator she
passed in the Fifth Avenue melee Zada L'Etoile, now Mrs. Cheever,
with the tiny little Cheever like a princelet asleep at her breast,
hiding with its pink head the letter "A" that had grown there.

People of cautious respectability spoke to Zada now with amiable
respect, and murmured:

"Funny thing! She's made a man of that good-for-nothing Peter
Cheever. They're as happy and as thick as thieves."

Charity had heard this saying, and she dreaded to realize that
perhaps in a few days respectable people would be turning from
herself, not seeing her, or storing up credit by snubbing her
and muttering:

"No wonder poor Cheever couldn't get along with her. He took the
blame like a gentleman, and now she's found out. She was a sly one,
but you can't fool all the people all the time."

Charity had not been gone from McNiven's office long before a
lawyer's clerk arrived bearing the papers for a divorce on statutory
grounds in the case of Dyckman versus Dyckman, Mrs. Charity C.
Cheever, co-respondent, Anson Beattie counsel for plaintiff.

McNiven went after Beattie at once and proposed a quiet treaty and
a settlement out of court. Beattie grinned so odiously that McNiven
had to say:

"Oh, I remember you. You used to be an ambulance-chaser. What are
you after now--a little dirty advertising?" "What are you after?"
said Beattie. "A little collusive juggling with the Seventh
Commandment?"

"The one against false witness is the Ninth," said McNiven, "But
let's have a conference. This war in Europe might have been avoided
by a little heart-to-heart talk beforehand. Let's profit by the
lesson."

Beattie consented to this, and promised to arrange it on condition
that in the mean while McNiven would accept service for his client.
This was done, and Beattie left.

He saw his great publicity campaign being thwarted, and changed
his mind. He hankered for fame more than gold. He filed the papers
and meditated. He did not know how much or how little Kedzie loved
her husband, and she had told him nothing of Strathdene. He feared
that a compromise might be patched up and perhaps a reconciliation
effected. He had had women come to him imploring a divorce from
their abominable husbands only to see the couple link up again,
kiss and make up, and call him an abominable villain for trying
to part them.

After some earnest consideration of the right of his own career
and his family to the full profit of this windfall, he looked up
a reporter and through him a group of reporters and promised them
a peep at something interesting.

He had the privilege of calling for the papers from the clerk of
the court, so he took them out and permitted the reporters to
glance within and make note of the contents.

Late editions of the evening papers gave the Dyckman divorce
a fanfare rivaling the evidence that the Germans were about to
resume their unrestricted submarine _Schrecklichkeit_.