“Have you seen the Driffields lately?” she asked me as though making conversation.
“I was there last Saturday.”
“You haven’t seen either of them since?”
“No.”
Mrs. Barton Trafford looked from Allgood Newton to her husband and back again as though mutely demanding their help.
“Nothing will be gained by circumlocution, Isabel,” said Newton, a faintly malicious twinkle in his eye, in his fat precise way.
Mrs. Barton Trafford turned to me.
“Then you don’t know that Mrs. Driffield has run away from her husband.”
“What!”
I was flabbergasted. I could not believe my ears.
“Perhaps it would be better if you told him the facts, Allgood,” said Mrs. Trafford.
The critic leaned back in his chair and placed the tips of the fingers of one hand against the tips of the fingers of the other. He spoke with unction.
“I had to see Edward Driffield last night about a literary article that I am doing for him and after dinner, since the night was fine, I thought I would walk round to his house. He was expecting me; and I knew besides that he never went out at night except for some function as important as the Lord Mayor’s banquet or the Academy dinner. Imagine my surprise then, nay, my utter and complete bewilderment, when as I approached I saw the door of his house open and Edward in person emerge. You know of course that Immanuel Kant was in the habit of taking his daily walk at a certain hour with such punctuality that the inhabitants of Konigsberg were accustomed to set their watches by the event and when once he came out of his house an hour earlier than usual they turned pale, for they knew that this could only mean that some terrible thing had happened. They were right; Immanuel Kant had just received intelligence of the fall of the Bastille.”
Allgood Newton paused for a moment to mark the effect of his anecdote. Mrs. Barton Trafford gave him her understanding smile.
“I did not envisage so world-shaking a catastrophe as this when I saw Edward hurrying toward me, but it immediately occurred to me that something untoward was afoot. He carried neither cane nor gloves. He wore his working coat, a venerable garment in black alpaca, and a wide-awake hat. There was something wild in his mien and distraught in his bearing. I asked myself, knowing the vicissitudes of the conjugal state, whether a matrimonial difference had driven him headlong from the house or whether he was hastening to a letter box in order to post a letter. He sped like Hector flying, the noblest of the Greeks. He did not seem to see me and the suspicion flashed across my mind that he did not want to. I stopped him. ‘Edward,’ I said. He looked startled. For a moment I could have sworn he did not know who I was. ‘What avenging furies urge you with such hot haste through the rakish purlieus of Pimlico?’ I asked. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘Nowhere,’ he replied.”
At this rate I thought Allgood Newton would never finish his story and Mrs. Hudson would be vexed with me for turning up to dinner half an hour late.
“I told him on what errand I had come, and proposed that we should return to his house where he could more conveniently discuss the question that perturbed me. ‘I’m too restless to go home,’ he said; ’let’s walk. You can talk to me as we go along.’ Assenting, I turned round and we began to walk; but his pace was so rapid that I had to beg him to moderate it. Even Dr. Johnson could not have carried on a conversation when he was walking down Fleet Street at the speed of an express train. Edward’s appearance was so peculiar and his manner so agitated that I thought it wise to lead him through the less frequented streets. I talked to him of my article. The subject that occupied me was more copious than had at first sight appeared, and I was doubtful whether after all I could do justice to it in the columns of a weekly journal. I put the matter before him fully and fairly and asked him his opinion. ‘Rosie has left me,’ he answered. For a moment I did not know what he was talking about, but in a trice it occurred to me that he was speaking of the buxom and not unprepossessing female from whose hands I had on occasion accepted a cup of tea. From his tone I divined that he expected condolence from me rather than felicitation.”
Allgood Newton paused again and his blue eyes twinkled.
“You’re wonderful, Allgood,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford.
“Priceless,” said her husband.
“Realizing that the occasion demanded sympathy, I said: ‘My dear fellow.’ He interrupted me. ‘I had a letter by the last post,’ he said. ‘She’s run away with Lord George Kemp.’ ”
I gasped, but said nothing. Mrs. Trafford gave me a quick look.
“ ‘Who is Lord George Kemp?’ ‘He’s a Blackstable man,’ he replied. I had little time to think. I determined to be frank. ‘You’re well rid of her,’ I said. ‘Allgood!’ he cried. I stopped and put my hand on his arm. ‘You must know that she was deceiving you with all your friends. Her behaviour was a public scandal. My dear Edward, let us face the fact : your wife was nothing but a common strumpet.’ He snatched his arm away from me and gave a sort of low roar, like an orang-utan in the forests of Borneo forcibly deprived of a cocoanut, and before I could stop him he broke away and fled. I was so startled that I could do nothing but listen to his cries and his hurrying footsteps.”
“You shouldn’t have let him go,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford. “In the state he was he might have thrown himself in the Thames.”
“The thought occurred to me, but I noticed that he did not run in the direction of the river, but plunged into the meaner streets of the neighbourhood in which we had been walking. And I reflected also that there is no example in literary history of an author committing suicide while engaged on the composition of a literary work. Whatever his tribulations, he is unwilling to leave to posterity an uncompleted opus.”
I was astounded at what I heard and shocked and dismayed; but I was worried too because I could not make out why Mrs. Trafford had sent for me. She knew me much too little to think that the story could be of any particular interest to me; nor would she have troubled to let me hear it as a piece of news.
“Poor Edward,” she said. “Of course no one can deny that it is a blessing in disguise, but I’m afraid he’ll take it
