“Carol!”
“She said something to the effect that he came here more to see you than anyone else. I shall tell Jack, Miss Jenny, mind that.”
With an inappositeness which afterward was to occur to Nevius as curious in the extreme, the girl became abruptly barometric.
“Wasn’t it nice this afternoon, so cold and brisk!”
“Cold? yes, it was certainly that, but I don’t know what your idea of niceness is. It rained pitchforks down town, didn’t it rain here? Why, Jenny, you are crying!”
But not a bit. The phantoms of twin tears had come and gone. Miss Adulam was mistress of herself at once.
“Poor Jack,” she murmured.
“Why, you foolish thing,” expostulated Nevius with much noise and indignation. “Damn Jack. No, forgive me, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant. I was only jesting anyway.”
“What’s all this,” he cried furiously at the servant. “Carry it all away and serve the coffee in the other room.”
“Come, Jenny,” he added in another tongue and milder tone. “Let’s have a cigarette in English.”
Michette, who lay, a ball of fur, before the fire, stared indolently at their approach, then, his back arched, his tail full as a bludgeon, made crab-like zigzags across a rug.
“I know what you want, you lobster, you want some music to dance to.”
And presently, the coffee disposed of, Nevius and Miss Adulam took seats at the piano and played a succession of resounding duets.
Whether Michette accompanied them with pirouettes and entrechats is not a part of history. The duets continued until, during a wonderful series of resounding accords, there came a ring, and Miss Adulam stood up.
“Thank you, Jenny. That went off very well, didn’t it? And you will come tomorrow? You are sure it doesn’t bore you?”
In a brotherly fashion he drew the girl to him and kissed her pure brow.
“Miss Adulam’s maid.”
A portiere had been drawn. The servant entered and disappeared.
“Yes, certainly, I will come.”
Nevius followed her to the hall, aided her with her cloak, accompanied her to the cab, and, as he reentered the house, told himself that it would not be a bad idea at all to see what effect a letter from him might have on the obstinacy of Miss Adulam’s lover.
IV
A week passed. Once Nevius read of his wife’s presence at the country club to which she had gone, and once she wrote. But the letter was brief, relating mainly to household affairs and conveying but meager details as to the writer’s occupation and environments.
Meanwhile Miss Adulam had been almost as good as her word. She had dined at Tenth Street twice and on the intervening Sunday had lunched there as well.
On that evening Nevius dined with Michette. The cat was loquacious, but its loquacity was not of the interruptive order, and as it monologued interminably on what seemed to be the same subject, Nevius felt bored. As a relief, the cloth removed, he wrote to his wife.
That pleasure at an end, the boredom returned, loneliness as well, and for companionship’s sake he looked in at the Athenaeum club where he ran into Alphabet Jones and managed to kill an hour.
“I hear you are making money,” the novelist between two whiffs remarked. “I hear you have enough to burn.”
“I wish I had. No, I may have to go to Chicago in a day or two, I am afraid even that I may have to go abroad.”
“It wouldn’t frighten me a bit if I had to. Will your princess go too?”
“Oh, of course.” And Nevius nodded with an air of assured conviction. “But how is the Muse? What are you writing now?”
“Cheques, dear boy,” Jones answered negligently. “Cheques, that’s all.”
“I thought you had something on the stocks.”
“Stocks is the word. The pillory comes later.”
“Your books are too confounded cynical. Alphabet. The public don’t like it.”
“But did I invent human nature?” And the novelist looked at his friend with an air ruminant and bovine in its innocence.
“I don’t believe,” retorted Nevius, “I don’t believe at all that it is human nature for women to act as they do in your books. Anyone might think that New York was peopled with demireps.”
“Perhaps. But then you see everyone isn’t blessed as you are.”
“No, that’s a fact, I admit. But even so, what is the use in choosing such subjects?”
“I choose a subject! Why, dear boy, a writer, if he happens to be worth his syndicate, never chooses a subject. The subject chooses him. He writes what he must, not what he might. That’s a thing that the public can’t understand. The secret of any work of value lies in the harmony existing between the subject and the author. And even then his one chance of success consists not only in yielding to the subject but in caressing it. Every artist knows that. Flaubert has rung his changes on it a thousand times.
“Oh, well, if you bring up your heavy artillery I surrender. After all I don’t mean to abuse you.”
“But I love to have you. The next time you have a moment skim over a history, and then come and tell me the name of one man of ability who has not been abused. And the greater the ability, the greater the abuse. It is the tribute that failure pays to success. Mediocrity is never discussed, and, being unforgiving, resents it. As for my books, if they please no one, doubtless they are poor, but if they pleased everybody I should consider them rot. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always wrong. What would a Scotch and soda say to you?”
“That I am vile and vicious I suppose. No thanks. I think I will be getting home.”
“By the way, if you and Madame go abroad, will Ablaut and Miss Adulam join you?”
“No, why should they?”
Jones lit a match and fumbled for a cigarette. “Are you sure you won’t have anything? Where is that devilish case gone now! Ah, yes, here it is.”
“Why did you ask?” Nevius repeated.
Jones
