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

In a well-built city house the insertion of a latchkey and opening of a front door between ten and eleven o’clock at night are noises easily covered by the urban roar of even one of the lateral streets of a great city. Robert entered and closed the door with – he assured himself – no greater minimum of noise than is instinctive toward midnight with even a sober married man. Among all the emotions which had seethed through his mind during the past few hours, a reaction was at that moment in possession of him, in favor of his wife, who had been to him a well of sweet water through all those years. If evil was drawing near to her, why push her toward it? Surely a finer thing would be to warn and protect her, to beat down underfoot his own wounded ego and win her back!

The electric light in the hall was burning, and he went directly to the library. Touching an electric button near the door, the room was flooded with light, and there before his weary eyes, hanging over the back of his Morris chair, was – Heaven help him! – a pair of long delft-blue silk stockings! Robert’s agony was black upon him, his mind once more full of crawling, writhing suspicions; his mouth and throat were parched, his pulse beats filled the world.

Then into the silence fell Helen’s laugh from the floor above, a long peal of mirth that spoke clearly of companionship. He had not made a life study of psychic differentiation for nothing – Helen was not alone! From that instant, all pretenses were abandoned, Robert was a sleuthhound on a keen scent.

With his head well forward, he crept up the carpeted stairway. The upper hall light was burning low; from his wife’s “sewing room,” as it was called, came the sound of voices. The door was ajar, and from the crevice a strong light flooded out into the twilight of the hall. Now entirely mad with jealousy, he softly glided toward the crack, but before his eyes could further feed his torture, his ears served up a plenitude, in Helen’s voice – that dear, clear, sweet voice that had sung his child to sleep and —

“Mr. Stillingfleet – my dear Mr. Stillingfleet, if I may be allowed the liberty – ”

“My dearest creature,” interrupted a deep voice, muffled, almost as if by intent disguised, “if it be a liberty to call me dear, I find myself craving the instant fall of kingdoms.”

“La, sir, you confuse me quite!” There was a rustle of silken skirts and Helen laughed again.

Peering cautiously in, this sight met Robert’s bloodshot eyes: Helen – or at least the fantastic figure which had her voice – stood by the mantelpiece. The hair was high-rolled and powdered, in it two nodding white plumes; she wore a yellow brocade gown strangely cut, long black mitts on her hands, which waved a huge fan coquettishly at a man – a creature in the costume of Goldsmith’s day – who stood near her, bowing low. On his head was a wig, powdered and in queue, his face a mask of paint and powder and patches. He was clad in a huge waistcoat, long coat, knee breeches and hose —blue hose – upon his comely legs! Putting out his hand toward Helen’s, he said with sickening affectation, seizing her hand and raising it to his lips:

“It’s high time we were off to Montague’s, my fair H. P. ‘Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites!’”

For an instant a very ancient and honorable desire to enter that room and violently change the face of several things dominated the listening husband; that he did not marked the high tide of his nervous breakdown. A sudden reaction, common to the neurasthenic, swept over him, and his soul withdrew in anguish from the sickening horror of the discovery. He crept softly down the stairs, seized hat and coat and staggered out into the night.

It was five days before Benjamin Bentnor’s best detective work succeeded in finding his brother-in-law in a hall bedroom at an obscure hotel in Washington, for a strong impulse of duty to be performed had landed Robert there, although he had completely lost sight of his mission. When Ben found him, he was seated on the edge of the bed, his head bowed in his hands.

Bentnor’s gentleness toward him would have shown a saner man that his condition was serious; but it took a physician to do that in the end, and a year of rest and travel to cure him.

At first, however, all Bentnor could do was to sit about rather helplessly and chatter in an effort to break through Robert’s gloom. The second day after he found his brother-in-law, he was at his wits’ end to find further subjects for cheerful conversation, until toward evening he had a sudden inspiration!

To be sure it was Helen’s secret, but surely she would not object to anything which might serve to arouse her poor husband’s interest, however slightly, and bring him to the point of consenting to return to his home.

Bentnor was short, stout, slightly bald, and somehow radiated comfort, even while sitting astride of a cane-bottomed chair, and smoking another man’s brand of cigarettes, in a one-windowed room nine feet by ten and a half.

“Helen Bentnor Penn’s a great girl, isn’t she, Rob?” No response came from the huddled figure on the bed.

“Of course, all the Bentnors have brains – you must have observed that for yourself; but she’s the first literary genius among us, although I’ve always felt that all I needed was leisure – however, that’s neither here nor there. Helen has arrived, and shall have the honor. Why, the editor who accepted that clever little lever de rideau of hers and brings it out in this month’s issue of his magazine, was downright enthusiastic – can you imagine an editor having any enthusiasm left in him, Penn? I can’t, for one. Must have a magnificent flow of gastric juice! However that may be, this chap has taken Helen up con amore, and written advice as to some changes, and given her interviews and all that. Most amateurs have to have several ‘fittings,’ I suppose. And then the check he sent her – by Jove, even I was surprised!”

Robert looked up for the first time, and turned a haggard face, blank with wonder, toward his wife’s brother. Ben laughed.

“Well, I suppose it is a bit of a shock to a man to find that his wife’s brains have a market value.” He was greatly encouraged by Penn’s aroused interest and hurried on with his tale:

“It strikes me I oughtn’t to be telling you this, Rob, for it was Helen’s birthday surprise for you. She’s been in an ecstasy over it for about eight weeks. Don’t you tell her I’ve told you! Promise!”

“Trust me,” murmured Penn, and a smile twitched at his face.

“Such plottings and plans and secrecy! I’ve been in it up to the neck from the first. On your birthday – somehow she’s in love with you yet, Penn – Lord, how does a man do that? – for breakfast she was to show you the magazine within whose fold is to be found her first literary lambkin; for luncheon – for you were to spend the day at home – she was going to give you the check! Generous little beggar, Nell! She said she had never been able to really give you anything before – she had only bought with your money and forced upon you things you didn’t want. Then that night after dinner she and I were to act her two-part play – we’ve been at it for weeks, tooth and nail, powder and patches – ”

“You and Helen!” gasped Robert.

“Great Scott! who on earth else? – the editor?” laughed Bentnor, little dreaming what the few words meant to the distraught man before him. “Perhaps you think I can’t do that sort of thing! It’s in our blood, the love of the buskin. The fact is, I’ve always had my suspicions that in the time of Charles the Second – well, never mind. We had our last final farewell dress rehearsal the night you came on here. I tell you I’m great in it. Helen, to be sure, does fairly well as Hester Piozzi, but wait till you see me as Mr. Stillingfleet! You know he was the fellow whose grayish-blue stockings gave the name for all time to ‘blue-stocking’ clubs. He and Dr. Johnson were always buzzing around the literary women of that day, the pretty D’Arblay, the dignified Mistress Montague of Portman Square, and the great Piozzi herself – of course, you remember?”

“Yes, I remember,” whispered Robert, his face once more hidden, but a great peace possessing him. “Ben,” he cried, almost joyfully, “what’s the title of Helen’s play?”

“Bas Bleu,” said Bentnor, concealing his triumph at his own tactics in the lighting of his twenty-third cigarette.

Robert groaned, and his head again drooped in unspeakable humiliation. And in that moment he made up his mind that no one should ever share his guilty secret. To make a pathetic appeal to Helen, dwelling upon his love, his doubts, his torturing jealousy, was one thing; quite another to tell that hopelessly humorous, refusing-to-be-pathetic story of those ridiculous bas bleus– they dangled everywhere from every point of his story; flying, pirouetting, circling and pin-wheeling in a psychic pas seul! It was impossible for even a member of the firm of Flagg, Bentnor & Penn to be impressive. Let them call it a nervous breakdown, his lips were forever sealed.

Then the thought of his home came to him like distant music. He saw himself opening his door; he saw a small ball of white coming down the stairs backward in a terrifying fury of speed, the little, fat, half-bare legs and a swirl of tiny skirts all that was visible of his wee daughter coming to greet him. He saw himself catch her off the last step and lift her in his arms, burying his face against the baby’s hot, panting little body, then he heard Helen’s voice and the sound of her scurrying feet!

Robert sprang up, and with a burst of wild laughter, shouted:

“Ben, let’s go home! I believe you’re dead right – I’ve got nervous prostration, and I’ve got it bad!”

THE VAGABOND

Your arms have held me till they seemed my home.
Your heart denies me; and the spells I weave
Are powerless to hold you. You must roam,
And I must, grieving, hide the thing I grieve.
Oh, love that does not love me, will there come
No time when I am all too dear to leave?

Is life so rich without me? Will there be
No ache of loneliness? No sudden sting
Of loss – of longing? Will your memory
Dwell on no passionate, sweet, familiar thing,
Soft touch or whispered word? Are you so free
From any ties but those new days may bring?

So much I miss you that I do not dare
To let my heart turn backward, nor my eyes
Search the wide future that is swept so bare
Of all I coveted. Yet deeplier lies
Than any misery of dull despair
The fear that you may some day come to prize
The things I stand for, when I am not there
To fill your needs with all my sympathies.

    M. M.

THE DOING OF THE LAMBS

By Susan Sayre Titsworth

Well, so long, fellows,” said the Goat, and rose to go.

“Good-night, old man,” responded the cheerful chorus of his hosts. As the Goat went out into the hall there was silence in the room he had left, which lasted until after he had opened the hall door and had had time to close it. But instead of closing it, he merely bumped noisily against it, and rattled the knob, and stood listening. As if his departure were a signal, a roar of laughter from within followed his stratagem. One voice rose above the noise.

“By George!” it said. “Isn’t he the limit?”

The Goat closed the door silently and mounted the stairs to his own room in the apartment above. His suspicions were confirmed.

They had dragged him in with them as they all came over together from dinner at the Commons, to tell them some more of his wild Western tales. It was not the first time they had done it. They were a select little group of Eastern men, two or three years out of Harvard or Yale, in rather good repute with the faculty of the Law School for the quality of their work, and known among their fellow students as the Lambs, from their somewhat ostentatious habit of flocking together.