“Yes, she wouldn’t tell me where Hilda was, she kept repeating that she was too ill to see anyone.”
“She was at the opera tonight”; said Jones very quietly.
“Impossible!”
“You may well say that, but I saw her. She was with the Andersons in their box. I asked Anderson how she could show herself when the papers were dripping with the scandal she had made—”
“Well?”
“He laughed. ‘She has come to enjoy her revenge!’ he told me.”
Nevius got up, went to the sideboard and pouring out a glass of whisky drank it off.
Jones watched him. When he turned the novelist added:
“In the circumstances I wouldn’t try to see her. She has left you, it should be beneath your dignity to approach her in any way.”
Nevius shook his head helplessly.
“How dense you are! You don’t or won’t understand. She is a woman after all, and no matter how she may suffer she has too much pride to show it. I think she ought not to have gone to the opera tonight, whether she believed this thing or whether she didn’t, and I think too the Andersons alone could have had the bad taste to invite her. But none the less I make every excuse for her. Supposing our position reversed, what is there that I might not do?”
“He has the faith of a little child,” the novelist mused, “it’s pathetic.”
“But tell me, what did she say when you saw her?”
“Nothing very pleasant. To be candid, she doesn’t seem to have the same good opinion of you that you have of her.”
And Jones, knocking the ashes from his cigarette, added meditatively:
“But then you may be both in error.”
This little conclusion may not have reached Nevius; he was pacing the floor.
“I know I have been selfish,” he muttered. “Damn selfish. But I can’t understand—”
“See here, dear boy. I will go to her tomorrow. If she is to be argued with, I think I can handle her. But do you get to bed; it’s after two, and you look like the devil. Leave the matter in my hands.”
Nevius stopped short in his walk and gazed at his friend.
“Do you know I don’t realize it? I can’t realize it. But if by any chance I were convinced that she was not to return to me—”
A gesture completed the sentence.
“Bah!” And the novelist smiled complacently. “Suicide is out of fashion, dear boy, and vulgar too. Now listen to me. Tomorrow the Snaiths will probably let you into your house. From what you said in your note I suppose you will want servants. I will attend to that. Now get to bed. I told you you looked like the devil, I should have said—you did. The devil is a very fascinating person, Carol, and unless you take some care of yourself you will entirely cease to resemble him.”
Oh, no doubt; and the novelist gone, the care which Nevius proceeded to take of himself consisted in more whisky, and on top of it a draught of the London drug.
XI
The morrow was charming, half spring, half autumn, with just that touch of frostiness which makes the blood beat fast. Nevius shivered, his eyes were heavy, his mind dull, his face yellow and blotched, the mouth drawn. He had looked at a mirror and had not looked again. Whisky bloats and opium disfigures. The ice water of a bath had brought a glow, but that had gone; he was trembling; it was a stimulant he needed, no doubt, and he called for absinthe.
With the drink a hall-boy came. There was a gentleman below with some keys and a message. Should he come up?
Nevius, his hand uncertain and vacillant, swallowed the absinthe before he spoke.
“Yes, he may come. And—what was it I wanted?—oh, fetch the morning papers.”
But the drink did him good. And presently, at a knock, he opened the door.
Before him stood a stout, young Jew, revolting as uncleanliness and vulgarity could make him. Yet, who vaguely, despite his nose and his youth resembled Mr. Snaith.
“Is your name C. Nevius? Well, here’s some keys and a summons.”
Nevius closed the door, the keys and summons in his hand. By whom could he be summoned now? But the mandate was perfectly legible. The complainant was Hilda Nevius, and did he not in twenty days appear or answer, judgment for relief demanded would be taken by default. Signed, Tooth and Tooth.
Tooth and Tooth? Ah, yes, the divorce sharks. Service by publication was not sufficient then. Apparently these gentlemen were in haste. And to think that Hilda could be capable—
The boy had come with the papers, but his coming and going passed unmarked. For an hour, that seemed a minute, Nevius sat wondering at his wife. A man who suffers is never bored.
But what did the hall-boy want now? Mr. Harding, of the Chronicle, was below, was he? And Mr. Robinson, of the Despatch, and Mr. McGrath, of the Evening Star? Well, below, deeper down even, for all of him they might remain. And yet, had he only Hilda to consider? Was there not Jenny, too?
“Show them up,” he ordered, and passing into the bedroom changed his dressing suit for morning garb. When he returned, the representatives of the press were there. Mr. Harding, who was sharpening a pencil, took the matter on himself.
“Mr. Nevius, I believe? Mr. Nevius, I have come to ask what you have to say in reply to the charges in yesterday’s papers? You have seen them, I suppose?”
“Yes, I have seen it stated that I made a confession, and then, to escape the consequences, fled abroad. I had no confession to make; I made none, and the fact that I am here should, I think, be evidence that consequences do not intimidate me. To this I have nothing to add, except that the charges brought against the young women named in the complaint are absolutely without foundation.”
“Shall you contest the suit?” inquired Mr. Robinson.
“If it is not withdrawn, as I am convinced it must
