The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories

He was true to his word, and reappeared just as all his friends were deserting town. For two torrid months he sat at his desk, drawing fresh plans of the Academy, and waiting for the wind-fall of a “big deal”; but in September he broke down from the effect of the unwonted confinement, and his indignant wife swept him off to the mountains.

“Why Ned should work when we have the money—I wish he would sell that wretched piece of land!” And sell it he did one day: I chanced on a record of the transaction in the realty column of the morning paper. He afterward explained the sale to me at length. Owing to some spasmodic effort at municipal improvement, there had been an unforeseen rise in the adjoining property, and it would have been foolish—yes, I agreed that it would have been foolish. He had made $10,000 on the sale, and that would go toward paying off what he had borrowed for the original purchase. Meanwhile he could be looking about for another site.

Later in the winter he told me it was a bad time to look. His position in the real-estate business enabled him to follow the trend of the market, and that trend was obstinately upward. But of course there would be a reaction— and he was keeping his eyes open.

As the resuscitated Academy scheme once more fell into abeyance, I saw Halidon less and less frequently; and we had not met for several months, when one day of June, my morning paper startled me with the announcement that the President had appointed Edward Halidon of New York to be Civil Commissioner of our newly acquired Eastern possession, the Manana Islands. “The unhealthy climate of the islands, and the defective sanitation of the towns, make it necessary that vigorous measures should be taken to protect the health of the American citizens established there, and it is believed that Mr. Halidon’s large experience of Eastern life and well-known energy of character—” I read the paragraph twice; then I dropped the paper, and projected myself through the subway to Halidon’s office. But he was not there; he had not been there for a month. One of the clerks believed he was in Washington.

“It’s true, then!” I said to myself. “But Mrs. Halidon in the Mananas—?”

A day or two later Ned appeared in my office. He looked better than when we had last met, and there was a determined line about his lips.

“My wife? Heaven forbid! You don’t suppose I should think of taking her? But the job is a tremendously interesting one, and it’s the kind of work I believe I can do—the only kind,” he added, smiling rather ruefully.

“But my dear Ned—”

He faced me with a look of quiet resolution. “I think I’ve been through all the buts. It’s an infernal climate, of course, but then I am used to the East—I know what precautions to take. And it would be a big thing to clean up that Augean stable.”

“But consider your wife and children—”

He met this with deliberation. “I have considered my children—that’s the point. I don’t want them to be able to say, when they look back: ‘He was content to go on living on that money—’”

“My dear Ned—”

“That’s the one thing they shan’t say of me,” he pressed on vehemently. “I’ve tried other ways—but I’m no good at business. I see now that I shall never make money enough to carry out the scheme myself; but at least I can clear out, and not go on being his pensioner—seeing his dreams turned into horses and carpets and clothes—”

He broke off, and leaning on my desk hid his face in his hands. When he looked up again his flush of wrath had subsided.

“Just understand me—it’s not her fault. Don’t fancy I’m trying for an instant to shift the blame. A woman with children simply obeys the instinct of her sex; she puts them first—and I wouldn’t have it otherwise. As far as she’s concerned there were no conditions attached—there’s no reason why she should make any sacrifice.” He paused, and added painfully: “The trouble is, I can’t make her see that I am differently situated.”

“But, Ned, the climate—what are you going to gain by chucking yourself away?”

He lifted his brows. “That’s a queer argument from you. And, besides, I’m up to the tricks of all those ague-holes. And I’ve got to live, you see: I’ve got something to put through.” He saw my look of enquiry, and added with a shy, poignant laugh—how I hear it still!—: “I don’t mean only the job in hand, though that’s enough in itself; but Paul’s work—you understand.—It won’t come in my day, of course—I’ve got to accept that—but my boy’s a splendid chap” (the boy was three), “and I tell you what it is, old man, I believe when he grows up he’ll put it through.”

Halidon went to the Mananas, and for two years the journals brought me incidental reports of the work he was accomplishing. He certainly had found a job to his hand: official words of commendation rang through the country, and there were lengthy newspaper leaders on the efficiency with which our representative was prosecuting his task in that lost corner of our colonies. Then one day a brief paragraph announced his death—“one of the last victims of the pestilence he had so successfully combated.”

That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said: “What’s the use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?” and another wiseacre opined: “Oh, he went off because there was friction at home. A fellow like that, who knew the East, would have got through all right if he’d taken the proper precautions. I saw him before he left, and I never saw a man look less as if he wanted to live.”

I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lighted cigar on his complacent knuckles.

“I never knew a man,” I exclaimed, “who had better reasons for wanting to live!”

A handsome youth mused: “Yes, his wife is very beautiful—but it doesn’t follow—”

And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon’s friend.

THE PRETEXT

I

MRS. RANSOM, when the front door had closed on her visitor, passed with a spring from the drawing-room to the narrow hall, and thence up the narrow stairs to her bedroom.

Though slender, and still light of foot, she did not always move so quickly: hitherto, in her life, there had not