“By the way, Jones, that was a nasty criticism the Saturday Review had of your book. Stupid sheet, isn’t it?”
“Stupid? not a bit. Only the year before last it had a most excellent article on manure. It is admirably edited, I assure you.”
“By gad,” snorted Anderson, an appreciative smile on his sodden, good-natured, face. “If I had the editor’s address I’d drop him a line and tell him what you say.”
“Drop it in the sewer, it will get to him in time,” Jones answered, and began anew at Anderson’s wife.
Ablaut, who sat at Mrs. Nevius’ left—James Ablaut, Jr., a large redheaded man, who dripped platitude and exhaled stupidity from every pore, yet the son of a Patriarch and as such supposed to be possessed of social power—grinned contentedly at his truffles.
Mrs. Nevius turned to the novelist: “Tell me,” she said, in reference to an episode which was then occupying not only society but the newspapers of two worlds as well—a husband who, surprising his wife with her lover, had killed the latter almost in the woman’s arms. “Tell me, what do you think of the Ex affair. Is it not terrible?”
“Terrible in its selfishness, yes,” Jones answered. “And still more terrible in its bad taste.”
“We men of the world—” Ablaut, anxious to get an oar in, began, but Jones was too quick for him.
“There’s a plural that is singular. Now, Mrs. Carol, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I think it was Ex’s duty to have made himself more attractive to his wife than anyone else could, but having failed, having seen that he failed, the dog-in-the-manger act which he committed was abominable. If any shooting was necessary it was himself he should have shot. But all that sort of thing is out of date and bad form too. A man of the world never sees or hears anything that was not intended for him.”
“You think he ought not to have made a fuss then? Well, perhaps; but when a man surprises his wife in that way—”
“He should apologize for the intrusion.”
“And do nothing?”
“Oh, if he really feels the need of satisfaction, he might express some astonishment and say to the lover, ‘Is it possible, sir, that you are embracing that lady without being obliged to?’ A little remark of that kind can be as effective as a bullet and has the advantage of not raising the roof.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” objected Anderson pompously. “This man was a snake in the grass. He was Ex’s friend and under cover of that friendship he led his wife astray. In Ex’s place I should have done the same thing.”
From where Mrs. Anderson sat came a ripple of laughter which silenced her husband strangely. Jones turned to him with serious mien:
“No, dear boy, permit me. A woman is never led astray. She trots, or gallops or bolts astray, but never is she led. Lovelace, Faust, Don Juan, rolled into one, are helpless where virtue is. Besides, in these days a man never makes the first advances, he hasn’t time. It is the woman, always the woman, who—”
“Dear me!” Mrs. Nevius was making a fine show of indignation. “Dear me, are all women as bad as those in your books? Haven’t you ever met any with a conscience?”
“Plenty, Mrs. Carol. Plenty. Some even with two.”
And as the novelist through his shrewd, tortoise-rimmed glasses gazed at his hostess, that lady lowered her eyes.
At the other end of the table Nevius was chatting inaudibly with Miss Adulam, a girl less pretty than fetching, small of feature, with the flush of youth still in her face and about her that intangible something discernible only in the end-of-the-century virgin of higher New York life, that air which, while indicating total incapacity for wrongdoing, indicates also a perfect comprehension that wrongdoing exists; in short, a girl to whom a man may talk without the disheartening dread of seeming to say more than he means. Nevius had known her when she was in short frocks, and a few years previous, encountering her haphazard in Paris, had made her acquainted with his wife. Since then the two had been much together, Mrs. Nevius, who understood perfectly the advantages which a married woman possesses in the companionship of a decorative young woman that can be relied upon to hold her tongue, having grappled her to her heart with hooks of steel.
“So you are not going to Tuxedo,” the girl was saying, though less for information perhaps than for conversation’s sake.
“No, why should I?”
“Hilda goes tomorrow with the Andersons and Ablaut.”
“Ah! I knew nothing of it. I did not even know they were to be here tonight. You either, for that matter. Hilda only told me when I got uptown. But what is this about Tuxedo?”
The girl shrugged a shoulder. “Some party they have made up. You don’t mind?”
“It wouldn’t matter much if I did, I fancy. Though if I seem to, it is only because of Mrs. Anderson, who is common as—as, well, let us say Narragansett Pier.”
“She is your guest,” Miss Adulam murmured.
“Very true.” And for the moment Nevius subsided.
Presently there was a general move to the adjoining room. There Nevius sat with the girl, Jones occupying himself for literary purposes in drawing Mrs. Anderson out, the other men dividing their hostess’ attention. But by eleven, husband and wife were alone.
As the front door closed for the last time, Nevius went over to where his wife was seated.
“I have been having a chat with Jenny.”
“So I saw.”
“What is it that Mrs. Anderson has been doing to her?”
Mrs. Nevius opened her great blue eyes in wonder.
“Doing to her? I am sure I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Jenny said she had told you.”
“Oh, what nonsense. Dulcibella happened to be a little friendly with her and she went to work and imagined all sorts of things.”
Nevius stared at his
