Nevius ceased to be seen. His office was closed. The Canal Company, with perfect civility, dispensed with his services; other corporations for whom he had acted withdrew their business from his hands. That Mr. Snaith had been at work he understood, but it was long before he understood that that gentleman’s object was to attack the sinews of war, and thereby, the law’s delays continuing, to force him to capitulate. When the understanding did come to him, he reflected with some satisfaction that while skies were still fair he had cut that gentleman in the street.
Meanwhile, he stalked, uncompanioned, through the untellable loneliness of that ghastly house, seeking a clue to the mystery that was devastating three lives.
That Hilda had cared for him he had to believe, or else to regard her as an actress more consummate even than Rachel. For where was the actress who could assume a role and hold it, impeccably, not for a season alone, not so many nights a week, but every minute of seven years? That she knew her accusations to be false he was now convinced. With these for premises what conclusion could he draw? It could not be that after years of tenderness she had left him, because there were moments when he was irritable and perverse. No, surely that was not the cause. Nor could it be that she had left him because her father had threatened disinheritance. Judas, indeed, had been bribed, yet, while in the present instance the bribe was greater, still, though times had changed and living become more expensive, Nevius was unable to accept any solution such as that. Beside, not being a bit more heroic than the rest of us, a conclusion of that kind diminished him in his own esteem.
In the night of his perplexity a single ray had come. Jones had enjoyed a second conversation with this lady, in which Mrs. Nevius, after stating that the man whose name she had taken, was heedless beyond the power of words, that he had constantly borrowed her buttonhook, added, by way of summing up, that she had married him uniquely to go into society, and as he had refused to take her, he should bear the consequences without complaint.
That was the ray of light, tremulous and thin no doubt, but which, by reason of the darkness in which he groped, led him ultimately to what he regarded as the day. As stepping-stones he had two facts, one pathological, the other psychological. The pathological fact was this: Women who at recurrent intervals suffer greatly, are afflicted not only physically, but mentally as well. Their minds become the haunt of vagaries, of illusions, sometimes of madness, too. For these sufferings, for these vagaries and illusions, there is but one cure, one to which nature prompts—motherhood. The psychological fact hung like a corollary to the first. When a woman has lived seven years with a man and borne him no child, unintentionally it may be, yet instinctively that man she hates.
At the intervals alluded to, Hilda, he was aware, had suffered for days with an intensity of agony which was pitiful to behold. Moreover, as the years accumulated, the union had remained unblessed. Such maternal affection as she possessed had been given to him, to the cat; but Nature, who is not to be balked, was there and watching, and this was the revenge.
Such was the solution to which at last he arrived. The accusations which she had made had been hatched in the distemper of her brain, and the venomous hatred which she had abruptly displayed was but the working of a natural law.
Logical as it was, this solution did not by any means come at once. Winter had gone, spring was going, and still he groped until, aided by the ray which Jones had intercepted, suddenly he divined the truth. She is insane, he decided, and told himself that of that insanity he would cure her yet.
Thenceforth he had that for an aim. What loyalty, what gentleness, what divine courtesy and affection had not an English gentleman just displayed to a woman who had forever disgraced him, who stood, the whole world looking on, a convicted felon at the dock? And should he, Carol Nevius, be other than loyal, courteous and gentle too? The malady which had prompted that fair English girl to steal was the same, no doubt, as that which had prompted his wife to libel. And when at last the prison door reopened, was not that English gentleman there waiting to take his wife in his arms and carry her off to where health and sanity might be. And when this trial was at an end should not he, too, take his wife in his arms and carry her thence and nurse and guard her until reason returned and love as well? Ah, indeed he would. The cases were not parallel, but if it comforted him to think so, let that comfort be not begrudged.
In this wise months retreated, but with June, presto! a change. Enervated by the delay, possessed, perhaps, of a clearer understanding of resources and temperaments, Mrs. Nevius, in spite of her father and his policy, goaded her attorneys into asking that the matter be brought before a referee.
The day on which that motion was asked and granted, a curious episode occurred. Mr. O’Donnell was offered by an individual whom previously he had never seen, ten thousand dollars in current coin if he would agree to let the suit go against his client, ten thousand more if he carried out the agreement.
“It is not enough,” was O’Donnell’s reply.
On the morrow the offer was doubled, and on the morrow the reply was the same.
XV
The day was hot and humid. In Upper Fifth Avenue green blinds were down, and grey doors were up. In the Park there
