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

“Only knocks him over,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”

“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”

“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities, and treated him as the high cockalorum of the whole ship’s company.”

“Surely he is joking,” she said. “Simeon is making game of you.”

“Simeon!” he echoed, mimicking her incredulous tone.

“A joke would be no stranger to him than a horse,” she said, smiling.

They had reached the entrance, and Deena stood shaking with suppressed laughter. “Fancy! Simeon!” she repeated.

“And why not Simeon, pray?” asked Stephen, slightly nettled.

A vision of Simeon with his gold-rimmed spectacles and stooped figure mounted on horseback in the midst of a party of Indians, whirling his bolas over his head and shouting, presented itself to Deena’s imagination. The carriage was waiting, and, obeying Mrs. Star’s motion to get in first, Simeon Ponsonby’s wife fell back on the seat and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

Outside, Stephen was entreating to be allowed to visit her the next morning.

“I haven’t half finished my story, Mrs. Ponsonby,” he protested.

And Deena managed to steady her voice and invite him to lunch the next day.

CHAPTER VII

French’s visit to New York was not the result of any weakening resolution in regard to his neighbor’s wife; the object was business. His property was chiefly in real estate, and the distinguished law firm who managed his affairs had summoned him to confer with a tenant who was desirous of becoming a purchaser. Being in the same town with Deena, he decided that he could not well avoid visiting her, to say nothing of Ben. It was his misfortune that every meeting made his self-discipline harder, for, if they lived, he had got to see her under still more trying circumstances – reunited with a husband who misunderstood her.

These thoughts passed through his mind the morning after their encounter at the opera, as he finished his breakfast at the Savoy. He had an appointment at his lawyers’ at ten o’clock, and at the Minthrops’ for luncheon at half-past one. The first, if properly conducted, might result in a largely increased income; the second in self-repression and a heartache; and yet his one idea was to dispatch the business, so that no precious moments of Deena’s society should be lost to him.

He was hurrying out of the hotel to go downtown, when a telegram was put into his hand. For the detached bachelor such messages have little interest. Stephen opened this one as casually as most people open an advertisement – may the foul fiend fly away with those curses of our daily mail! – and read:

    Buenos Ayres, Jan. 30.

Pedro Lopez to the Hon’ble Professor French, Harmouth University.

Tintoretto on its way home. Ponsonby missing.

Stephen read the dispatch several times before he quite understood its significance. Pedro Lopez was his South American friend, who had set on foot the Fuegian expedition and applied to Harmouth for a botanist; the Tintoretto was the vessel furnished by the Argentine Government.

The cable message had gone to Harmouth and been repeated to New York, probably by Stephen’s butler.

The first effect of evil tidings is apt to be superficial. We receive a mental impression rather than a shock to the heart. We are for the moment spectators of our own misfortunes, as if the blow had produced a paralysis to the feelings, leaving the intellect clear.

Stephen went back to his own room conscious of no emotion except intense curiosity as to what had become of Simeon, though, perhaps, far back in his mind anxiety was settling down to its work of torture.

He flung himself into a chair near the window which overlooked the entrance to the park and let his eyes gaze blankly at the busy scene. It had snowed during the night, and sleighs were dashing in and out under the leafless arches of the trees. Bells were tinkling, gay plumes of horsehair floating from the front of the Russian sleighs and the turrets of the horses’ harness, men and women wrapped in costly furs were being whirled along, laughing and chatting, through the crisp morning air.

Stephen didn’t know he was receiving an impression – he thought his mind was at a standstill, but whenever in the future that terrible day came back to his memory, he always saw a picture, as it were, of the brilliant procession dashing into the city’s playground, while Saint Gaudens’ statue of Sherman stood watching, grim and cold, with the snow on his mantle and his Victory in a winding sheet.

It was not very long before French was able to pull himself together and to face the situation. What did it mean? Had Simeon lost himself in the Patagonian wilds or was he drowned? French felt that he couldn’t carry such an uncertain report to Deena, the strain upon her would be too great. It was horrible to have to tell her at all, but he must try to make the news definite – not vague. Gradually he thought out a course of action; he would telegraph to Lopez to send him a detailed account, cabling the answer at his expense, and until this reply came he thought himself justified in concealing the news. Lopez was in constant communication with the expedition, and the letter which had announced Ponsonby’s disappearance must have gone into particulars.

After dispatching this cable he kept his appointment in Wall Street, transacting the business with the dull precision of a person in a hypnotic sleep, and then presented himself at the Minthrops’ a few minutes before the lunch hour. He had not been prepared to find Deena installed as hostess, and her manner of greeting him and presiding at the lunch table was so assured, so different from the timid hospitality she was wont to offer under Simeon’s roof, that her whole personality seemed changed. She more than ever satisfied his admiring affection, but she was so unlike the Mrs. Ponsonby of Harmouth that he felt like confiding to this gracious, sympathetic woman the tragedy that threatened her other self.

Early in the day, before that woeful message came, he had counted the minutes he could spend with her, and now he was timing his visit so as to curtail it to the least possible duration, and taxing his ingenuity as to how best to avoid seeing her alone. It was Saturday, and he trusted to the half holiday for the protection of Ben’s presence; his depression of spirits would be less noticeable in general conversation.

He arrived on the stroke of the hour set for lunch, and to his chagrin was shown to the library, where Deena was sitting alone. His trouble deepened, for, after motioning him to a chair beside her, she resumed her embroidery and said, with a quizzical expression:

“You were in the midst of Simeon’s last letter when we parted last evening, Mr. French; please go on with it. You may remember you left my unfortunate husband pledged to become a horseman.”

Stephen could not respond to her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag at the start.

“At all events, I left him safely surrounded by friends,” he said – more in answer to his own feelings than her banter.

In thinking over any disaster, the mind loves to dwell on the peaceful moments that preceded it. Stephen found comfort in recalling the gay tone of Simeon’s letter, his delight in his coming adventure, and the good feeling that evidently existed between him and the ship’s company.

Deena took exception to his remark.

“You have strange ideas of safety!” she laughed. “Not content with mounting a confirmed pedestrian on a wild horse of the Pampas, you must needs turn him loose among a horde of savages. The hunt had not taken place when he wrote, had it? It is a pity, for I should like Simeon safely back on shipboard without the loss of spectacles or dignity.”

She would like Simeon back! What wouldn’t French give to know her husband was still alive!

The butler announced lunch, and Ben came dashing downstairs, delighted to see Stephen and full of excuses at having lingered in his wife’s room. He said Polly was feeling rather poorly, and Stephen was glad to see a look of anxiety cross Deena’s face; he rightly judged her thoughts had been diverted from Patagonia to Polly’s sofa, and he breathed once more.

What a pleasant luncheon it was, in spite of the lurking dread. Deena was wearing the old blue dress he had recommended to her the night before. It could not be from coquetry – she was above coquetry – but perhaps she had put it on to recall associations; to remind him of the close bonds of friendship that existed between them in those pleasant autumn days that followed Simeon’s departure. Stephen was not very learned in the make of women’s frocks, but he understood color and could appreciate how that steely-blue made her complexion glow warm as ivory and her hair like copper.

They were pretending to quarrel over a dish of salted almonds; Deena declared that French was getting the lion’s share, and finally covered the little silver basket that held them with her hand. On the third finger flashed old Mrs. Ponsonby’s diamond in its antiquated silver setting, and below it was her wedding ring, the narrow band that symbolized her bondage to Simeon. For the first time since French had received the cable, its possible significance to him took possession of his mind, and he flushed a dull red and fell into a reverie.

In all probability there was no longer any barrier between him and the woman he loved; nothing to prevent his striving to win her, but the period of her mourning – the respect she owed to the memory of a husband who was the palest shadow of a lover, and not even the ghost of a companion. He wondered whether she had ever guessed his feelings – feelings which he had subdued and held under with all the strength of his nature, partly through fear of forfeiting her friendship and partly because her charm was in the simplicity of her goodness. If love had once been named between them, Deena would have been other than herself.

Her voice roused him. She was excusing herself in order to go to her sister, and leave him and Ben to smoke. He held the door open for her to pass with a profound sense of relief – no suspicion of his awful secret had been betrayed. But oh! the comfort of talking it over with Ben, of sharing the burden with another! They discussed the meager announcement till they had exhausted every probability and found nothing to hope and everything to fear.

“I hope to Heaven he is dead!” cried Ben. “Imagine a man physically weak, like Ponsonby, enduring slow starvation in the damp and chill of the Patagonian seacoast. It will be a positive relief if we hear he fell overboard.”

“Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Stephen, and the speech must have been from the new point of view, the hope of Deena’s freedom, for the next moment he was conscious of a wave of shame.

“I ought to get an answer from Lopez before night,” he added, rising to go; “and as soon as I hear I will return and let you know.”

Ben followed him to the front door, whispering like a conspirator and glancing furtively up the stairs. There was a childish streak in the boy’s nature that gloried in a confidence; the joy of the secret nearly made up for the sorrow of the fact. But secrets and sorrows were soon put out of his head, for a crucial moment had come to the young Minthrops – one we anticipate and are never quite prepared for.

As he ran upstairs, after seeing Stephen off, he met Deena, evidently looking for him.

“Oh, Ben,” she said, “Polly is ill, and I have telephoned for – ”

But she got no further, for her big brother-in-law turned white as a frightened girl, and when he tried to speak no sound came from his lips.

“Goose!” said Deena, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Shall I get a glass of brandy? Do you suppose no one has ever met with this experience before?”

Ben recovered himself with a fit of irritation, which seems the corollary to being frightened.