“When I am with Hilda,” Nevius answered, “the sky is always fair.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the lady, by whom that phenomenon had evidently passed unobserved. “Ah! indeed!”
Nevius turned to the girl, she was smiling, the red tip of her tongue just visible, and so adorable was her expression that it was only a proper appreciation of form which prevented him from catching her and smothering her with kisses in his arms.
But in the dining-room the enthusiasm of the moment was forgot. Mr. Snaith broke a raw egg into his soup and refreshed himself with whisky and lithia, a beverage that he declared was tip-top for gout, which statement passing unchallenged he entered into a long tirade against physicians in general and professional men in particular. They were either idiots or scoundrels. “Yes, sir, every damn one of them.” To all of which Mrs. Snaith assented. Then he relapsed into a domineering silence, and some attempt was made at more amiable forms of talk but without sufficient success to cause any needless prolongation of the repast.
When the bowls were brought and the women had gone, Nevius turned to his host. All over him was written the fact that he had seen worse days and never intended to see them again. He was short and obese, with a face like a brandied cherry, and as terrible as vulgarity and ready-made clothes could make him. He looked exactly what he was and nothing worse could be said of him.
“I believe you are aware that I have asked your daughter to be my wife.”
“She has made her bed and she can lie in it,” Mr. Snaith replied.
“Am I to infer that I have your consent?”
“Infer? I don’t know what you infer. She’s got a good home, I don’t see what she wants to leave it for.”
“Doubtless,” answered Nevius, “for the same reason that Mrs. Snaith left her own.”
“That’s nothing to do with it. She’s not fit to be married, I’ve told her mother so. But let’s cut it short. What’s your income?”
“Forty-six hundred.”
“I’ll give her the same as long as I can afford it and not a damn cent more.”
“Perhaps in a year or two it won’t be necessary for you to give anything.”
“So much the better for me then.”
And with that Mr. Snaith left the table and hobbled from the room.
Had Nevius been other than himself, he too would have left the room, Bronx as well. Even the law had not brought him into contact with a boor such as that. For a second it seemed to him that in spite of Hilda and the irreparable he must wash his hands of the whole affair, but in that second Hilda was at his side and led him out to where the red moon was, the gurgling waters, the locust’s hush.
Before the red moon waned white he was reconciled. A girl such as she possesses enchantments which dull regret. And during the prenuptial honeymoon which ensued the only regret he could maintain was that which concerned his position toward her. But for what was the marriage service invented? In the autumn their loves were consecrated by a diligent bishop, and for a while they loitered among the quick of Paris and the ghosts of Rome. When they returned, the house in Tenth Street was made habitable, and Nevius threw himself into work as another plunges into dissipation.
A year passed, another, a third, six in all, yet on this particular evening, as Mrs. Nevius from the head of the table questioned him in regard to the possibilities of future income, she was, if not a bounder, as the word is used, still as far from the inner sanctuaries of upper fourdom as when the doors were closing on her sister’s back.
At the time being she had no opportunity of expatiating on this wrong. A servant appeared and announced that Mr. Ablaut was in the drawing room.
Mrs. Nevius rose from her seat, and her husband, punishing a yawn with a tap of the finger, made for the library.
“If it were Jenny now,” his wife called after him, her eyes half-closed, her chin upraised, “you wouldn’t be in such a hurry, would you?”
II
“I would rather have written Salammbô than have built the Brooklyn Bridge. It was more difficult, and besides it will last longer.”
Mr. “Alphabet” Jones, the novelist, a thimbleful of champagne in his throat, was discoursing to the guests whom Mrs. Nevius had assembled.
“Yes, of course,” interjected Mrs. Anderson, a young woman with the face and manner of a cocotte. “Ah, yes,” and she smiled with an air entendu; “but does literature pay?”
With elaborate manifestations of bewilderment, Jones threw himself back in his chair.
“Pay, Mrs. Anderson? Pay, did I understand you to say? Why, look at Bradshaw. Year in, year out, he clears ten thousand pounds sterling.”
“Bradshaw? Bradshaw?” Mrs. Anderson shook her head vaguely. “Oh, yes, the author of Ben Hur.”
“Ce qu’elle est idiote,” muttered Nevius to Miss Jenny Adulam, who sat at his side.
“Ce qu’elle m’ennuie,” responded that young woman. But her eyes said more than the words conveyed: they complimented Mrs. Anderson with a look of absolute abhorrence.
“What is it?” Nevius asked, who had seen but not understood. “What has she done?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But you must, Jenny.”
“I can’t; I told Hilda and that’s enough.”
“No, dear Mrs. Anderson,” Jones was saying. “Not Ben Hur; you are thinking of Mr. Gunter. Bradshaw is the author of Rabelais, Tristram Shandy and The Bride of Lammermoor.”
“Yes, yes of course, but then you see I thought he was dead.”
“Not dead, dear Mrs. Anderson, and that is just the point I was seeking to convey. Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. But how well Scalchi sang last night. Don’t you think her voice must have been changed in the cradle?”
From across the dinner-table Clayton
