The Smart Set Part 2

I shall never forget the day I changed my plans suddenly, deciding I wouldn't go to New York that week after all, although my bag was packed and Smithers already at the station with it. The instantaneous look of disappointment which leaped across your face, and which for some seconds you didn't sufficiently realize to conceal--what a vista that look opened out to me--a h.e.l.lish vista! And your constrained little smile--a sort of conscious visible movement of the muscles about your mouth--"on purpose"--came too late. That first look had been like a Rontgen ray over the last six months of our life--lives I should say, for while you and I were living one life, you at the same time, without me, were living another. Then I understood this summer's comfortable weekly good-byes, so different from other years! I think, down in the bottom of my heart, I understood _all_ at _that moment_,--though I wouldn't acknowledge it not even in secret to myself, and even when, before another twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed, my eyes were d.a.m.nable witnesses against you. I couldn't believe them, and doubt if I would have if you had not confessed. Of course, I knew whenever we had guests Jack Tolby was always one of them, and also one of the guests wherever we went, but it only seemed natural. He was extremely agreeable in our house; it's only now I realize he has always rather avoided me at the club. I suppose even men like him have some sort of conscience, or at least a sense of decency, if not of honor, toward their own friends, and, if so, good G.o.d, how ashamed he must have been every time he had to take my hand! And _you_, when you received my lips on yours, already satiated with kisses in my absence! Ugh! Kate! Kate! how I hate you!

Yes, hate is the word. And to think _you_ are the mother of my children! That is the _big_ hurt.

I want you to understand that what I am going to do is entirely for their sake, not at all for yours. You who have been the first to drag the name of Kennington in the public mud. Three honest generations of us have kept it clean and honorable, and our wives have done the same for us all down to you--all except my wife. I used to think that in marrying me you had placed me deeper in your debt than I could ever repay. Ever since the first time I saw you I loved you; and after that meeting I put my arms about no woman--arms that had been free enough before--until I put them around you. And since then the same. I have been an absolutely faithful husband to you. Do you understand what that means? I don't believe so. I preferred you to every other woman in the world. When away from you, your memory guarded my embraces. Yet I am not a romantic man. Now, for instance, I look at it all in a straightforward light. I realize that you were a girl with no money and no particular position in the world; and in marrying me you obtained both. You have reveled in society--thanks to me and my family--and this is the return you have made. You have dishonored us. Now listen; this is what I propose doing. I do not intend to have my children suffer publicly, as they would, especially my two little daughters, if your disgrace were made public. It happens to be with us that a father's falling in this direction does not so seriously, if at all, affect his children; therefore, for their sake, instead of my divorcing _you_, I am going to give you proof and witness by which you may divorce _me_, for your own sin. But there are certain conditions with which you must comply. I will send by my lawyer a paper, which you will sign in the presence of witnesses before any further steps are taken. In this paper you will agree on your securing your divorce to marry Tolby. I have had an interview with him (this is not an age nor a country of duels), and I demanded that he make me the reparation of marrying you when you are free. I must frankly say from his manner I do not judge him over anxious. I believe even a duel with pistols would on the whole have pleased Tolby better. It is true that precedent is not in his favor.

His own experience with you will doubtless make him a little uneasy. To continue: You are to marry him. You are to demand of me in your suit the sum of $---- (and do not be uneasy, you will win your suit). This will be convenient for you when you re-marry, for you know Tolby hasn't a cent. It will be a real love match on your part, charming! You are to give all my mother's jewels to our oldest daughter on her marriage, and all the jewels I have ever given you to our second on hers. Should the girls not marry at twenty-five, they are then to have the jewels. As to the children I shall have to submit, in my role of the guilty party, to letting you have control over them; but I warn you that this is to be only nominal. If ever I find you prejudicing either one of them _against me in any way whatever_--even if I find their affections are being alienated from me by some sort of public opinion or gossip--I warn you that when each one is old enough to understand he shall be told the _truth_. You had better look to it then that my children love me. Your own hold over their affections rests upon it. These points, and a few others bearing upon them, will be set forth legally in the paper which my lawyer will bring you. Kindly send me word if you are prepared to sign, and, if so, when Mr. Jordan or his representative may call. Good bye.

JOHN STUART KENNINGTON.

II

_From Mrs. John Stuart Kennington, by Special Messenger, to the law firm of Jordan & Fields._

No. -- East 66th street.

Benj. K. Jordan, Esq.

Dear Sir:

On second thoughts, after you have left me, I have decided to ask you to write Mr. Kennington as follows--I mean I will give you the idea of what I wish said: Acknowledge the receipt of his letter, and say I shall be delighted to sign the paper he proposes at his earliest convenience. I must ask, however, that he submits the doc.u.ment through you, etc. (the same as we agreed on just now in our interview). Now, besides, you must demand for me the following changes or corrections, or whatever is right to call them, in the paper. First, the sum of $---- is too small; $---- must be added to it. Also, I am not willing to give up all my homes. Either the house in New York, or in Newport, or on Long Island must be made over to me. And I positively refuse to part with the ruby necklace to one of my daughters unless I should choose to do so of my own free will. For the other jewels I have no use whatever. You can express that as you see fit. Ask him to let me hear as soon as possible.

Yours truly,

GERTRUDE CORTE KENNINGTON.

Tuesday.

The Summer

A Letter

Grand Hotel de l'Europe,

Aix-les-Bains,

Sunday.

My Dear Mary:

Our summer has been a perfect failure. I said in the very beginning if we followed John and the children's ideas it would be; but as I was in the minority I gave in. Fortunately we did catch the tail end of the London season. The others wanted to go straight on to Paris, but for that once I put my foot down--and all the trunks as well. It was very warm; still there was a great deal going on, so we didn't mind the heat, at least I didn't. Heat in London during the season is such a different thing from heat in Switzerland or some dull seaside place, where there is not sufficient distraction to take your mind off it. I was doing something every minute. That's the charm of London. Every hour of the day there is something, and if there ever was a dull interval I dropped into one of the picture galleries. You know you have to do that sort of thing over here. People talk about pictures, and some do it very well, too, and you really meet painters out. The children go and see things that are good for their education, you know--the Tower, where Mary Queen of Scots, or Anne Boleyn, I forget which, was beheaded, and the--well, all sorts of places like that. The heat made them rather irritable, and Evelyn had a rash, but I thought it was good for them to see all the historical sights. So we staid on just the same till after Goodwood. And the races ended my pleasure, for next we started for Lucerne.

I said all along there would be no one in the place. Of course people do go there, but on their way to somewhere else, or coming home at odd times, and not for too long. There is never really any society there. I knew it. I have had experience with it. Besides, we know the places that every one does go to in July and August. I preferred Homburg, with Aix at the end, but I would have put up with Trouville first, or Ostend, or even Dinard. But no, Switzerland it was! I hate it; I always did. It's too like its photographs. It has absolutely no style. It's all nature, nature, _nature_! The mountains and lakes, no matter how old they really may be, still always have the _beaute du diable_; and for a woman of my age--who has to resort to art to keep herself looking the slightest little bit younger than she is!--it gets on one's nerves, all this natural beauty! I prefer some _place_ that has to resort to art, too, and make itself up a little with gorgeous hotels, casinos, theatres, and baccarat tables. Mountains bore me, and I hate to go on the water. There at Lucerne the mountains stood continually and solemnly around, just like elderly relatives at a family reunion, and the flat lake lies as uninteresting as the conversation of these estimable creatures would be. And then the people! The town crowded to suffocation, scarcely breathing s.p.a.ce, and yet _n.o.body_ there. To be sure once in a while one notices an extraordinary old frump go by, who turns out to be the d.u.c.h.ess of this, or Princess that, but I a.s.sure you one would have been ashamed to drive in the park with her (at home), unless she was placarded. Now and then somebody decent from New York or Boston arrived on a morning train, but, of course, they usually left in the evening, driven away by the glare, or the white dust, or by the eternal tourists. That man Cook has done more to spoil attractive places than any other dozen people in the world put together.

Sometimes, of course, they are amusing. One day I went to see the Lion!

Don't laugh. John bet me five hundred dollars I wouldn't go. So, of course, I did. Fortunately I'd heard the children explaining it or I shouldn't have enjoyed so much the following joke.

A woman and her daughter, both Cooks, (tourists I mean, of course, tho'

heaven knows what the mother mightn't have been at home), stood in front of the monument.

"What's this, Clara?" asked the older woman.

CLARA.

Why this is the famous Lion of Lucerne, mother!

MOTHER.

Oh is it, ain't it lovely! What's it for--I mean why is it?

CLARA.

Why, you know, mother, for defending poor Marie Antoinette in the Tuilleries!

MOTHER.

Oh, did it! And then people say lions are such nasty, heartless creatures.

CLARA.

(Laughing.) O mother! the lion didn't do it; it's only put up for a monument to the soldiers who died trying to protect her from the mob!

MOTHER.

Oh, I see; it's just a fancy picture! Well, anyway, I think it's awful sad.

What do you think of that? And those are the kind of people Switzerland was full of. Some were alone, and some were impersonally conducted in a very loose sort of way. Wherever you wanted to go they were sure to be ahead, and kicking up a middle-cla.s.s dust that choked you. The loud sound of their incessant _talk_ echoed from snow peak to snow peak. And their terrible clothes, chosen evidently "not to show the dirt" (but they did), came between your eyes and any beauty of scenery there might be, even if you cared to see it, and I didn't. And then the droves of rich Americans at the hotels! Where did they come from? Where did they learn how not to dress? Where did they learn how not to behave? Those are the questions I asked myself continually, and always gave them up!

I became so tired of hearing of Pilatus and the Rigi, I felt as if one were at the head of my grave and the other at the foot! I had a sort of indigestion of mountains and lakes! And there was John! rus.h.i.+ng out every other minute to sit and look at them (I a.s.sure you I was threatened very much with the neuralgia from the damp of the lake terrace). And he climbed everything that was climbable, even preferred walking up; but when there were railways I made him take them for fear he'd hurt himself. I believe he went to the top of every blessed thing that had any top! I found plenty of horrid people to look down on without going to the tops of mountains. I tried to drive, but there wasn't a decent turnout in the place. I went out in a little steam launch, but was frightened to death for fear I'd be run down by one of the steamers crowded with Cooks. Oh, no! _a.s.sez_ of Switzerland for me!

I said to John--"Bring me here to bury me if you like, but don't bring me here alive again." And finally, when he and the children couldn't find anything more to climb, I managed to move them on to Aix, and here I am.

And, of course, the English season has just finished, and the French people haven't begun to come yet, and Aix is hot, and dull, and empty!

Really, isn't it trying? There are even only second-rate cocottes about, none of the smart ones yet! I am dying of the blues. Besides I have to take the baths, although I don't want them, because the only way I managed to persuade John to come here was by pretending I _needed_ them! When I think of you in Newport, in spite of the heat, leading an absolutely ideal life with your visits, your dinners, and your b.a.l.l.s, I am green with envy. These are the times when life seems really almost too complicated to worry through. Or course if I were like John's sister Margaret, sort of half-crazy, who loves the real country, prefers a farmhouse to a hotel, fields and woods to a casino, I might get on well enough. But I consider that nothing short of a morbid state of mind.

If you love me, write me soon, and cheer me up. But don't tell me of too much going on with you, or it will be more than I can bear. If you could honestly say that it was rather a dull season in Newport this year, you don't know what a comfort it would be. I do hope John and the children appreciate the sacrifice I am making for them. I'm sure I try to have them realize it. It only shows what we mothers will do for our children.

With love, your affectionate, but depressed,

GERALDINE.

P.S.--Of course, as you can imagine, the shops at Lucerne were filthy.

I didn't buy a thing except some presents for the servants. At Aix the shops are better, but with so few people here, somehow one has no inspiration. I've bought literally nothing except five hats.