During the early days at Jackwood when I was busily engaged in hiring guests to come and partake of my board and rooms (I mean the professional diners out) I found great difficulty in securing patrons. I had plenty at my command so far as professional friends and visiting Americans were concerned, but the fair Maxine had the English bee in her American bonnet and insisted that we try to get together some of the impecunious nobility and army men as guests.

I knew of no one who represented those particular branches and had no desire to know any, but being under her hypnotic influence I sought a woman, the wife of a friend of mine, an American mining man, who knew all the swagger members of "the Guards." Through her influence one of these sapheads was persuaded to visit our humble home from Saturday to Monday. He came, accompanied by one of the present Dukes of England (whose father, by the way, died owing me a paltry two thousand dollars, borrowed on the race course at Deauville, France). They came down with Mme. Melba and Haddon Chambers.

We had a lovely time (that is, I presume they had). Max insisted on my entertaining the guests between courses with my supposedly funny stories. Generally after the telling of each one, which occupied some little time, my portion of the feast was either cold or confiscated by the butler. Very little attention was paid to me anyway except when I was telling anecdotes (and on the first of every month when the bills became due!).

On this particular Sunday evening the guests sauntered into the drawing room expecting to hear Melba sing. She didn't even talk!

Then the party, in couples, sauntered through the house and inspected the grounds.

Being on particularly good terms with the butler I selected him for my companion and we quietly strolled through the upper rose terrace discussing a menu that might appeal to the next influx of England's dilettantes. By this time all my American friends were barred. Max considered them "extremely common" by now.

The butler and I were figuring out the expenses of the previous month as the pale moon cast its rays over my book of memoranda. Inadvertently we stopped before an open window of the drawing room. As we stood there I chanced to overhear this remark:

"How could you possibly have married such a vulgar little person?"

Being terribly self conscious at all times I said to my butler, "Luic, I am the v. l. p. to whom that chocolate soldier is referring. Listen, and we'll have a Warrior's opinion of a Thespian!"

Then ensued the following dialogue:—

She: Do you think him vulgar?

He: Not necessarily vulgar, but an awful accent!

She: Well, no one ever accused him of an American accent. He was educated in Boston. Don't you think him rather amusing?

He: In what way?

She: By way of anecdotes and funny stories?

He: Were those stories he told at dinner supposed to be funny?

She: Of course; didn't you hear the guests laugh?

He: Yes; so did I, but simply in a spirit of compliment. Is he supposed to be a comic man in your country?

She: Extremely so.

He: Really?

She: And he talks remarkably well.

He: Did he talk remarkably well to-night?

She: I thought so.

He: Well, maybe, but I was deafened by your beauty. I saw nothing but those beauteous eyes of yours, my dear Mrs. Goodwin and everything else was a blank. Really, I—

She: Now don't pay me silly compliments, Lord Algy; it isn't nice.

He: I beg your pardon; but please tell me how did you happen to marry that funny little man.

She: Now don't ask impertinent questions; one has to get married and, really, when he talks he says something.

He: Does he—really?

The butler and I resumed our stroll.

Some time after I met this Grenadier, talked—and said something! (My editor refuses even to edit it.)

Jackwood proved a lovely summer abode for me. It cost me fifty thousand dollars to get it and fifteen thousand a "year" to keep it up (we were there about ten weeks every season). It cost me twenty-five thousand dollars to lose it!

During our lives at Jackwood incident followed incident, each of which convinced me the autumn leaves were falling that would soon bury me. I discovered the fair Maxine was being bored save when the house was filled with English guests. Americans bored her even more than I did! My repertoire palled and the anecdotes she screamed at when we first were wed met with but little response and that only when the dinner table was filled with English guests who found it quite as difficult to fathom my wit as Maxine.

Life at Jackwood was beginning to pall on me. Many Sundays found me a lonely host. Max was constantly accepting invitations to meet people at country houses, spending the usual Saturday to Monday outing away from her own fireside.

These Saturday to Monday gatherings as a rule were the rendezvous for unblushing husbands and wives whose mates were enjoying the hospitality of opposite houses of intrigue. Generally no husband is ever invited to these meetings accompanied by his own wife, the husband always accepting invitations to the house party of his friend's wife—and thus the silly and unwholesome game goes on.

In nine weeks my wife made nine trips of from two to six days' duration each. These outings included a visit to one of England's ex-Prime Minister's country house, a Member of Parliament's yacht and a society lady's home at Doncaster.

Being very respectable at the time, I was never invited to any of these functions.

During my entire occupancy of Jackwood I accepted just one such invitation. And then I was bored stiff. Of all the asinine, vacant, vapid lot of people I ever saw commend me to the polyglot mob one meets at the average Saturday to Monday gathering. Even the few actors and actresses who were present seemed to absorb the atmosphere and became deadly dull.

You must understand the guests are invited from some ulterior motive—women to meet men for every kind of purpose, men to mingle with men for financial reasons, from a tip on the race course to the promotion of a South African mining scheme, women to meet women to plot and intrigue and make trouble for either of the sexes. It is a sort of clearing-house for the sale of souls and the ruin of women's morals. At these gatherings more plots are schemed, more sins consummated, more crimes committed than at Whitechapel during a busy Sunday! When one stops to consider what can be accomplished by a bunch of these parasites in forty-eight hours it is appalling. I leave it to your imagination—what can be consummated in a week at these places—where statesmen and financiers lend themselves to such intrigues—on yachts, in closed stone castles and concealed hunting lodges!

At first I mildly protested against my wife's accepting these invitations and was always met with mild acquiescence and a desire to do what I demanded. If it were distasteful to me she would not accept and, like a dutiful wife, remain at home with me from Saturday to Monday. For two Sundays we sat in the drawing room with each other twirling our thumbs! It was a day of eloquent silence—each of those Sundays! At first I tried to think up stories to amuse her but she would look up from her book with those dreamy, cruel eyes, listen for a moment and in sweet dulcet tones remark:—

"Very clever, my dear, and most amusing, but you told me that some time ago at Seattle!" Then she would resume the reading of her engagement book for the following week.

I soon grew tired of our Saturday-to-Monday tÊte-À-tÊtes and let her go on her own as they say in England. We gave a few parties, but as I found it difficult to separate my friends from their wives I gave it up—and usually spent my forty-eight hours going to Paris to see a play or to Ostend to indulge in it.

It took me but a short time to become disgusted with our mode of living and alarmed at the expense involved. My clever wife adroitly managed to avoid all expense (although we had agreed to share it equally). Once in a while she would accidentally leave her check book where I could see it and the stubs convinced me she was not paying any of the household bills. Large sums were artfully arranged in a cipher which a Philadelphia lawyer or a writing expert could not fathom.

"Cigarette case for A" might mean Arthur or Alice; "Luncheon to N" might be Nellie or Ned; "Sundries for M" might mean Mike or Mabel—and there you are. Wherever her money went she was contributing nothing to the maintenance of the home (which included the services of sixteen servants)!

I made up my mind to bring things to an issue—to use a slang expression, to vamp. Ugly rumors were rife concerning the attentions of the ex-Prime Minister, the Member of Parliament, two American millionaires, an English Lord and the leading man of Maxine's company. I put Jackwood on the books of a real estate firm and placed my furniture in a storehouse together with the contents of my wine cellar (only to see them again, alas, adorning the home of my wife on Duke Street, London, a residence purchased during our marriage, to which I was never invited!).

After I had tried so hard to entertain her at Jackwood I think her conduct most discourteous.

Our life was very tranquil at Jackwood so far as we were personally concerned. Things went along pretty smoothly until we made a trip to Trouville for a holiday. I was privileged to enjoy myself alone most of the time as the fair Maxine would leave me early in the morning returning in time for dinner after a day's outing on the golf links accompanied by some English admirer. I spent most of my time gambling at the Casino, where I managed to lose thirty thousand dollars! And some ass has written:—

"Unlucky in love, lucky at cards!"

Up to this time I considered my wife thoughtless and fond of admiration as all women are—but not worse than that. The only time she failed to exercise her diplomacy and splendid tact was during our sojourn at this French watering place. Perhaps my constant presence irritated her. There is nothing that so gets on one's nerves as the presence of someone who is a bore. I don't blame any woman for wanting to jump the traces under these conditions. The only thing I hold against her is that she never told me. It would have been very easy and I would willingly have released her from her misery, but to inform people by inference—to make a boob of me—was unkind, unjust and cruel.

It never occurred to me that I was boring her until I came across a letter which fell into my hands quite by accident. My servant mistook it for a note addressed to me and placed it with several others he had previously opened for my perusal. It furnished one of my reasons for divorcing the most beautiful woman in the world. Here it is:—

Any man who could live with a woman who wrote such a letter does not deserve the name of man. I made up my mind to quit then and there and told her so. I gave her my reason, kept the letter and took the train for London and the boat for America—thirty thousand loser!

Gee! but I had a bully summer!

Maxine Elliott is a variously gifted woman. With the ambition of a Cleopatra she used me as a ladder to reach her goal and found her crowning glory in the blinding glare of a myriad incandescent lights which spell her name over the portals of a New York theatre. She is one of the cleverest women I ever met. Her dignity is that of a Joan of Arc, her demeanor Nero-like in its assertive quality and yet she has channels of emotion that manifest womanhood in the truest sense of the word.

Chapter LIX