Short Fiction

because of this thing, but because you have returned. Her attorney told her they would get a divorce in short order and here you are declaring you will contest it. You have upset her calculations. She fancied she could be free at once.”

“Yes, but then she didn’t understand. I assure you she will be very sorry when she learns the truth, very sorry indeed⁠—”

“H’m,” the novelist sniffed and smiled. “When she is, I send my resignation to psychology. She knows the truth, she has always known it. Never for a second has she believed the charge she has made.”

“It is not Hilda; I have told you that. She wrote me that she was so dumb and crushed that her people took the matter entirely out of her hands.”

On the table at which Jones had seated himself, was a pile of bills and letters. On the topmost was the imprint of the District Messenger Service. Leisurely the novelist reached for it. In the envelope were the vouchers of the month before. Jones drew out one, then another.

“Tell me,” he presently asked, “when did you sail for Europe?”

“The second of December.”

“Your wife’s attorneys are Tooth and Tooth, are they not? So I thought. Will you look at this? It is dated 2nd of December and addressed to Tooth and Tooth, who you will see detained the messenger one hour and an answer which seems to have been received by somebody who signed herself H. Nevius. Is it your wife’s writing?”

The ticket he tossed across the table.

“Here is another, same date, same address. Here is another dated the 4th. Here is another dated the 5th. For a lady who was dumb and crushed, whose affairs had been taken entirely out of her hands, it seems to me that not only she was very agile with the pen but⁠—”

Nevius sprang at him fiercely.

“But what? It is on evidence of that kind she has condemned me. Poor child, she knew no better. But you, who have accused her of listening to the tattle of the servants’ hall, do you expect me to descend the back stairs, too? Give me those tickets.”

Seizing and mutilating them he flung them at his feet, and in the same hot wrath blurted:

“If you have anything else to say against my wife, say it, but do you say it to me.”

Reflectively the novelist contemplated his fingertips, joined them, separated them, and joined them again.

“There is a little operation I must perform on you, Carol. One which will pain, but which is necessary and charitable.”

Mystified by this preamble, Nevius stared.

Jones stood up, closed the door, and whispered to his friend.

The latter shrank, his eyes dilated, his mouth agape.

“No, no, tell me; she never said that!”

“She has then, not to me alone, but to everyone. That sweet little friend of hers, Mrs. Anderson, with whom she is stopping, fairly revels in it. There isn’t a man in town, nor a woman either, that won’t hear it tomorrow.”

When Jones got the scalpel in his hand he knew where and how to cut. But then in this instance he was a trifle annoyed at the slur on his friend.

“When I heard it,” he continued, “I did not see the object. I have since. Mrs. Carol understands what a mess she has made of it all, and she is trying to exculpate herself at any cost. If there is a single thing believable or unbelievable that she and Mrs. Anderson are capable of inventing to your discredit, invent it they will, and proclaim it too.”

Nevius bowed his head. The hot wrath must have gone.

“How sorry she will be,” he muttered. “How sorry, how sorry, how sorry she will be.”

What was there in that for Jones to laugh at? Yet laugh he did.

“My little Hilda!” Covering his face, Nevius leaned down and rested his arms on the table. When he again looked up his eyes may have been red, but they were steadfast still.

“Wait. Wait until I see her. For she must see me, or⁠—”

“Yes, I told her your ultimatum of last night. Would you like to know what she said? It is not pleasant, but if it removes this cataract of yours I don’t mind. She said, and very affably, mind you, in that little voice which I have heard her affect when she wishes to impress: ‘Tell that man that nothing he might do could cause me greater pleasure, except to send him the pistol with which to do it.’ ”

As in pain which is acute, Nevius dug his nails into the palms of his hands, and for a while his face, tortured with the retroacting currents of conflicting thought, expressed only a suffering, sentient and visible. But gradually the hands relaxed, the expression modified, and you would have said that the cure which Jones had attempted was without effect.

“From what you say,” he ventured at last, “I must believe that Hilda’s condemnation of me is complete. But then I have been horribly selfish⁠—”

“Her condemnation is so complete,” the novelist interrupted “that it absolves you from condemning her. In the total lack not only of justice but of decency which she displays, comfort yourself as you seem disposed to do, by being charitable to her and unjust to yourself. It is not nineteenth century, no, but by gad, its red-heel. Carol, I want you for a book.”

“⁠—So selfish,” Nevius repeated, “that some day when you see her I want you to tell her that I regret it from the bottom of my heart.”

For a moment he looked down and away, but almost immediately, with a smile that was its own apology, he added:

“It’s best to take people as they find us, isn’t it, Alphabet? You have been very good to me, very considerate, and you have borne magnificently with my ill temper. I want to thank you, but I can’t. I am a trifle tired, perhaps⁠—”

“Yes, you had better get to bed. But I want to thank you, and I can,