Wentworth turned to Gordon. “I haven’t seen an evening paper. How did the market go?”
But Gordon was not Julianne. He knew nothing of fairy tales. He had not found life a dream fulfilled. None the less there was a game to be played, and he played it.
“Well,” he threw out, “the best I can say for it is that it did not go sidewise.” Without transition he added, “I thought Julianne might be lonely, and I just looked in.” For a moment he hesitated, scrutinizing Wentworth’s face. It was quite blank. Then zealously he resumed, “But you must be tired. I’ll run. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Less thoroughly now than before Wentworth was again alone in this room which, fitted with things costly and futile, seemed to him bare. For a while at the table he stood occupied with that journey to the irreparable which is at once the quickest and the longest that any man can take. In considering things, he considered, too, his own attitude. In circumstances such as these he saw that another might have merely gone and, in going, omitted, technically at least, to condone. Or else he might have shot—yes, and shouted. Or again he might have beaten the man, abused the woman, thrown them both in the street. More barbarously still, he might have laughed and said, “Good God, sir, is it possible that you have been embracing this lady without being obliged to?”
One or another of these things a man might do, but not a civilized man or, more exactly perhaps, an evolved one, and Wentworth at least was that. The point did not detain him. What preoccupied him was the question of duty, the proper thing to do.
Opposite, across the room, hung an inferior daub that had been signed by a superior name. Absently he looked at it, and suddenly it counseled, reminding him that a prophet, discovering that his wife was in love with another man and that the other man was in love with her, had moved aside, got her a divorce, attended the wedding, given her away.
Wentworth was not Ruskin, and certainly Gordon was not Millais. But the procedure appealed to Wentworth to whom it seemed the only way in which he could rightly act.
He did not reach the decision at once or even as here summarized. It was the next day and after much mental wrestling that he attained it. Meanwhile he had inquired concerning his wife. With her Pekingese she had gone for a drive.
It was then high noon. Shortly, in one of those trains which the night before had shone and vanished, he got to the office of a lawyer. The latter, Mr. Tatum, was a man with the air of a chucker-out and a manner of almost infantile gentleness.
“And so,” he cooed, when Wentworth had had his say, “you want to give Mrs. Wentworth a divorce. Well, now, that presupposes a corespondent. From what you tell me I assume that there is none, in which case if for the purposes of Mrs. Wentworth’s action, you procure one, it is collusion.”
Wentworth nodded. “And consequently more expensive.”
Mr. Tatum moistened his lips. “But I think it can be arranged. The main difficulty may be with Mrs. Wentworth’s attorneys.”
Again Wentworth nodded. “And who need not consider the expense either.”
“I wish all my clients were like you,” Mr. Tatum comfortably replied. “Or rather I wish you were not my client at all. Yes, I do. It is not for me to go behind what you have told me. But it is clear that you are here to do, not the right thing, but the gentlemanly one. The gentlemanly thing is the conventional thing, and all conventionality is cowardice.”
“I think I have heard that before,” Wentworth got in.
Mr. Tatum made a gesture. “Perhaps then you have also heard this: There are certain edicts that no court can dissolve. Issued by our forefathers ages ago they determine our instincts, make us what we are. These instincts used to make men so agreeable that they stoned certain women. Nowadays, in men of your class, they urge them to open all the doors, all the windows, run around and jump off, fish for a divorce and bring it back on a silver platter.
“I’m not a married man,” the lawyer resumed, “but if I were, and I—well, let us say the devil tempted me, I should deeply regret to have my wife discover it. But if she did I would expect her forgiveness. Certainly I would, and if she were a good woman and cared for me, in time I would get it. All love is pity. On the other hand, if the devil tempted my wife, I would forgive her. The one affection worth having is that which can, not only forgive, but console. The majority think otherwise, but in all matters stupidity is very generally diffused. Personally on that score I have no cause for complaint. It is on general stupidity that we lawyers subsist.
“In other words, you mean that I am an imbecile,” Wentworth again got in.
“I mean in matters of this kind, the proper thing is to run a sponge over whatever may be amiss. None the less I am at your service. Mrs. Wentworth shall have a divorce, if you still wish it.”
“Still wish it? I did not come here to change my mind.”
Tatum laughed. “Do you know, I have a room that I use for no other purpose. Changing the mind is a cleanly habit and consequently hygienic.”
But as he laughed, he stood up. Mantled with the dicta which he had let fall, his client was leaving.
These dicta, in the train back, that client examined. They did not seem to him very cogent. To employ a sponge was, he reflected, all very well. But there are sponges of different sizes and classes. The kind he required was a divorce sponge, one that would release Julianne and enable
