“What have you to say in regard to Mrs. Nevius?”
“Mrs. Nevius does not enter into the matter. There is no need for any mention of her name.”
“You think then,” began the representative of the Star, “that the suit was instigated by third parties?”
“I think nothing about it. I know. But this gentleman—” and Nevius indicated Mr. Harding, “—asked if I had any statement to make. I have made one. If you will publish that and nothing else you will oblige me.”
“But—”
“At this moment, I regret, I am occupied. I must ask you to excuse me.”
The door behind him was open, and through it he retreated, angry with himself, angry with fate, angry with the world.
When he returned, there was the hall-boy again. This time with a note from Jones to the effect that he had secured servants and would look in later on.
“I send you the keys.” Nevius scribbled in reply. “Tell the servants to meet me at the house, and do come before midnight.”
The answer despatched, he sat down and tried to think, to forget rather and not to remember.
XII
Already the afternoon had taken itself off. A sun, red as ceiling-wax burned and subsided, leaving a sky of dead rose and water-green. Then shadows came, lapping the walls, devouring the furniture, creating abysses into which objects disappeared, mysteriously, one by one.
When night was wholly there, Nevius groped for his hat and gloves. Presently he was in the street, in a few minutes at his house. Yes. Jones had been as good as his word. There were lights in the windows and the outer door of the vestibule was open. With a latchkey he let himself in. The hall was chill, bleak too, sonorous beneath his tread. But where were the hangings and tapestries, where were the plants, the pedestalled lamps, the silken cushions, the candles with their yellow shades, all the attributes of ease that six weeks before had filled the drawing room? Surely this was not his house, or else had the sheriffs passed that way. But it was his house, and why was it dismantelled? Where had the scent of the iris gone? Ah, yes; he remembered. These things were Hilda’s, all of them, even to the scent of the iris, and in leaving him, necessarily she had taken her chattels too.
And the floor above! Truly were it not for the chill he might have thought it summer time and Hilda off to the seashore, so properly had little familiar things been put away. But what was that on her bureau from which everything else had gone? Nothing, a picture of himself merely, overlooked, no doubt, and forgotten. Yet was it a picture of himself? At least if he had ever had the youth and alertness with which the picture credited him, never would he have them again.
The library which so long and well had separated her room from his had, out of gratitude, perhaps, been left untouched. There were the yellow shelves of law, the darker tomes of history, and here, in smooth maroon, stamped with the Nevius crest, were the classics of Greece and Rome. Beyond were the caryatides of literary France, Corneille, Racine, Molière, dusty and undisturbed. But this empty space beneath? Surely Hilda never could have taken away the little gifts she had made him before she bestowed that great gift which was herself. The Owen Meredith from which in the gardens of Bronx she had repeated to him:
Since we parted yester eve,
I do love thee, love, believe,
Twelve times dearer, twelve times longer,
One dream deeper, one night stronger,
One sun surer, thus much more
Than I loved thee, love, before.
The Aldrich from which he had read to her:
But there will come a time, my love,
When if I read our stars aright
I shall not linger at your side
With my adieux. Till then, good night.
You wish that time were now? And I!
You do not blush to wish it so?
You would have blushed yourself to death
To own as much a year ago.
And the Sonnets of Proteus:
What shall it matter, when our heads are gray,
Whether we loved, or did not love today?
And the Swinburne:
A little while and we die: shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
But though the rhymes returned unprompted, where were the books? Where was the Festus, the Rosetti, the Tennyson? Surely she could not have taken these gifts away. But then, what had she done with herself? And why did the gas burn so dimly? Or was it a mist that had got to his eyes?
“I beg pardon, sir—”
Nevius started. At the door a man stood, coatless, looking at him. “I am Patrick, sir; my wife is in the kitchen, would you—”
“Yes, of course. I know. Let me see—suppose you go to the Brevoort and get my tilings. Tell them to send the bill to my office. And what time is it? No, I can’t eat anything, but if there is any whisky lying about, you might bring it up.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir. Mr. Jones is in the parlor. Shall I ask him here?”
But before the novelist entered the room, Nevius lit a cigarette and hid his face in smoke.
“Well?”
“Well, I have seen your princess, and so far as I am concerned I can dispense with the honor of seeing her again. Calumny is to her what venom is to the adder, a sole defence. A harder, an unjuster woman I have never met, no not even in the masquerades of my own fiction. Her entire accusation has no other foundation than the tattle of the servants’ hall.”
“She is annoyed, Alphabet. So would I be. Don’t say anything against her. You don’t know her as I do. You don’t know the letter she wrote me. Her heart is breaking. But when I see her tomorrow—”
“See her! You’ll never see her till you meet in court. She is furious, not at all
