Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

We were a bit late – Natica and I. It must have been a quarter past the hour when we drove up to Cherry’s. I felt reasonably certain that if Jack Drayton were guarding a champagne bucket by the corner table that night, he was located then. In the offing, miserably self-conscious, a crush hat on the back of his really fine head, and two or three small locomotive headlights glinting from his broad expanse of evening shirt, was “Boiler-plate” Hartopp. The flunkeys were regarding him curiously, and once a waiter-captain came out and gave him what seemed to be an unsatisfactory report.

I think the man was just about to take the count from sheer nerves, when he made me out in the doorway. Natica winked – actually winked at me – as he floundered over his share of the introduction. Looking at her, and faintly divining her mood that night, I felt sorry for Jack, for “Boiler-plate” and for myself. I left them for a moment and went in to see about my table. Two minutes later I emerged, to face Drayton and the Hartopp unloading from an electric hansom. The under-toned remark of one of the footman came to me: “A bit behind schedule time to-night, eh, Charley?”

There wasn’t anything to do then, for they were fair inside. “Boiler-plate” was finishing some elephantine pleasantry to Natica, when he saw what I saw. A foolish grin rippled across his wide face. “Hullo!” he said to the Hartopp, who looked properly peevish, and then waspish, as she let her glance travel to Natica, who stood perfectly poised and, I fancied, a trifle expectant. Drayton eyed them together and in particular. The color streaked his forehead and faded out. Then he saw me, and, although he never may have murder in his eyes again, it was there at that choice moment. We weren’t at all spectacular, you mustn’t think that. It was all very quick, and there were a lot of people coming and going.

She was in instant command of the situation. Why shouldn’t she have been, having created it? And unexpectedly, suddenly as she had encountered her quarry, equally suddenly she shifted her position, without the time to take me into her confidence.

“Don’t bother about our table, Percy,” she said. “Now that we’ve met friends, it will be jollier to dine en famille. It will be ever so much nicer than eating in a stuffy restaurant, and the butler won’t have gone to bed yet. Run out and get us a theater wagon.”

I went out to the carriage man in a trance. The gods, of a deed, were fighting furiously on Natica’s side – for she could not have foreseen this vantage, readily as she swung her attack by its aid. Exquisite torture, truly, to flaunt a husband’s folly in his own face, over his own mahogany, with the source of that folly looking on. Drayton’s bounden civility to his wife, and to the other woman, must make him present himself as a target. He knew it, his wife knew it; as yet the other woman but dimly suspected it – not being over subtle – and it smote me in the face continuously. The puppet always feels the most cut up at times like these. In a way, it is because his vanity is being seared. Mine fairly crackled.

So we rattled off up the avenue. The only comfortable ones among us were Natica and Hartopp. He seemed to think the occurrence a pleasant bit of chance, and he wasn’t in the least jealous, not he. I suppose the wife had him schooled to her stage ways of doing things.

Once he turned to Jack with a chuckle and said: “This is a jossy bit of luck, ain’t it, each of us out with the other man’s better?”

Natica laughed shamelessly. “You’ve such a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, Mr. Hartopp,” she said. And when “Boiler-plate” tried to deny the insinuation, his wife nudged him on the arm and whispered: “Shut up, Jim.”

There isn’t any use in stringing out the amateur theatricals the five of us indulged in that night. The Drayton servants were too well chosen to show any surprise at being told to put on a champagne supper at midnight, and then go to bed before it was served. We sat at that mahogany table until the candelabra were guttering, and each of us had toyed more than he ought to have done with his glass. Natica acted as if she were entertaining in earnest, and for the time being I actually think she felt that she was. She got the Hartopp to sing her “Jo-Jo” song, and the Hartopp actually did it as if she enjoyed it. Afterward Natica induced “Boiler-plate” to tell about the time he mixed it up with Fitzsimmons for ten rounds.

“It was a lucky punch that put me out,” he kept repeating, almost pathetically. “You know Fitz’s lucky punch.”

I might have seen what was in the wind if I hadn’t been thick-headed, what with the champagne and the rattles. “Boiler-plate” once started on the ring, it was an easy transition.

“You’ve boxing gloves, haven’t you, Jack?” asked Natica. “Get them for Mr. Hartopp. Let’s see him demonstrate Mr. Fitzsimmons’ lucky punch.”

Drayton turned without a word, and made as if to go upstairs. At the door he turned. “Come on, Hartopp,” he said. “I’ll lend you a rowing jersey.”

“You clear a place in the drawing room, Percy,” said Natica, briskly. “Be sure that the shades are drawn. It would be awful to be raided by the police.” And I obediently piled the gilt parlor furniture in corners.

The Hartopp fluttered anxiously around Natica the while. She was a woman, and she was beginning to half understand. “Please,” she said, touching Natica’s arm. “Jim’s been drinking, and he’s very rough when he’s been drinking. We’ve all been foolish, but only foolish, remember. Jim and I sail for London next week. Just let us slip away now, and forget all about it.”

Natica laughed. Her eyes were on the door. “Remember, we’ve only been foolish,” repeated the Hartopp. “Only foolish, that’s all.” She went to Natica and shook her arm roughly; there were feet upon the stairs. “You silly,” she snapped. “You ought to be glad you’re married to a gentleman. He’s different from all the others. I can tell you that, and I know. And I tell you that Jim’s been drinking. Jack will – ”

Natica’s pose stiffened, but she did not look around. “Yes, Jack will what?” she said, coldly.

The Hartopp flushed. “He’ll be hurt,” she finished, weakly. Then, as the two from upstairs entered, she whispered: “He’ll be hurt worse than you are now.”

The “Boiler-plate” looked very foolish in an old Yale rowing shirt, with the “Y” stretched taut across his ponderous chest. He had a pair of arms like a blacksmith. Jack Drayton had taken off his coat and was in his shirt sleeves. He never looked at Natica, nor at the Hartopp; but he tossed me a stopwatch and told me to keep time.

“We’ll box five rounds, Percy,” he said.

Natica clapped her hands. “What fun!” she cried. “Jack, you’re boxing against my champion.”

The “Boiler-plate,” who had been regarding the work at hand with much gravity, again allowed his countenance to be relaxed by the old, foolish grin. “Oh, I say,” he interposed. “That’s all right, but so long as Maisie is in the room I’m fighting for her – she’s my wife, you know.”

The Hartopp went to Natica with a softened gleam in her eyes; “I saw a telephone in the hall,” she said. “I’m going out to call a cab.” I heard her at the lever as they began to spar.

I don’t believe I could get a job at timekeeping in a real mill. My rounds must have been wonderfully and fearfully made. For I forgot all about the stop-watch now and then, while I learned the truth of the Hartopp’s caution that “Boiler-plate” grew rough after he’d been drinking a bit.

I knew that Jack had been a pretty fair boxer at the university, but, after I had called time for the first round, the thing was to all intents and purposes a genuine fight, and he was all in several times over. The “Boiler-plate’s” fists made a noise like a woodchopper. Natica stood watching it with a queer, queer smile. But I saw – and I saw it with a sinking at the heart, for I realized that I’d cherished the guilty hope that things were not really going to be straightened out – that with every mark of the “Boiler-plate’s” glove, her husband was coming back into his own.

She half sprang toward them when Jack went down with a crash, after I had got them started on the last go. Drayton arose warily, the blood spurting from a nasty cut over the eye, where the heel of the other’s glove had scraped. The “Boiler-plate” lumbered dangerously near just then, and Natica, despite her, uttered a cry of warning.

I saw Jack turn away from the mountain in the Yale rowing shirt, and his eyes met Natica’s squarely for the first time since Cherry’s. Something he read in them made him laugh. This was only for the fraction of a second, however, for a glove, with the nth power behind it, lifted him a clear three feet into a stack of gilt chairs near his own corner.

He didn’t move, and the “Boilerplate” stared at him stupidly.

“Say, you made him look at you,” he said to Natica. “I didn’t mean to land on him blind.”

But she did not heed him. She was among the gilt chairs, with Jack Drayton’s head upon her lap. The wheels of a cab stopped outside, and the Hartopp was seizing her dazed lord and master. She had his coat and bediamonded linen in her hands, and she clutched the “Boiler-plate” firmly, leading him to the door.

“Say, Maisie, wait a minute,” he protested. “I’ve got the swell’s college shirt on, and I didn’t mean to land on him blind.”

I opened the door, for she signaled with her eyes. “Come on, Jim, there’s a dear,” she said. Between us we cajoled him into the coupe. As I shut the door, she leaned to me and whispered: “Tell her for me she’s a cat – a cruel cat.”

I handed the driver a bill. “You’ve a very bad memory, cabby, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Extremely bad, sir,” said he, touching his hat.

“But, Maisie, I’ve got the swell’s college shirt on,” I heard “Boiler-plate” insist. Then the wheels moved.

The Draytons were both upon their feet when I stole back into the hall. I needed my hat and coat, or I shouldn’t have set foot within the house again that night. Jack, a bit staggery and holding to the back of a chair, mopped the cut on his temple with a handkerchief, his wife’s handkerchief, in his free hand. Natica, a smear of red on the front of her frock, stood beside him, with a strangely happy expression in her face and pose. A great many things had been pushed over the precipice which leads to forgetfulness, in the time I had been out on the sidewalk busy with the cabby.

“Good-night, Percy,” Jack called out.

“Good-night,” said I, going to him to take his hand, for he was too wobbly to have met me halfway.

“It’s been a nightmare,” said he. “We’ll wake up to-morrow morning and know that we’ve only been asleep.”

“Yes,” I agreed, but looking at the puffiness in his face, I thought this was coming it a bit strong.

“Good-night, Percy,” said Natica. And gently as she spoke the words, it came to me with a sudden rush of conviction that I had ceased fagging for the Drayton establishment for good – now.

“It was coming to me,” said Jack. I was fiddling on the threshold uncertainly.

“Hush, you foolish boy,” whispered Natica, touching the cut on his forehead, just once, with a very tender finger.

“Yes, it was coming to you,” said I. I was glad that they perceived the conviction in my speech.

And that is how I had my last supper with Natica.

BY THE FOUNTAIN

By Margaret Houston

There was nothing in the aspect of the white brick mansion to indicate that a tragedy was going on inside. A woman quietly dressed, her face showing delicately above her dark furs, came lightly down the steps. She paused a half second at the gateway and looked back, but there was no hesitation in the glance.

“Jules,” she said to the coachman, “you may drive to the park.”