# Mrs. Middleton's Husband

Extracted from The Green Book magazine, 1918, pp. 228–240. Accompanying illustrations by R. L. Lambdin may be omitted. [The Adventures of Mrs. Middleton's Husband #1]
HE'S just a poor rich man who rebels against being supported, but the adventures of his rebellion are interesting indeed. The first of a delightful series by the gifted author of “Toward Morning.”
Mrs. Middleton's Husband
By I. A. R. Wylie
ILLUSTRATED BY R. L. LAMBDIN
“UGH!”
Strictly speaking, this is not what Mr. Middleton said. Strictly speaking, Mr. Middleton did not say anything at all. He merely emitted a sound—something between a snort, a groan and a growl, which the combined agility of the English alphabet is wholly incapable of reproducing. Coming from behind the fortifications of the Times financial supplement, its effect was prodigious. Even Mrs. Middleton jumped, and this in spite of the fact that she had on a new dress, that she faced a full-length Venetian mirror and that she was a remarkably pretty woman.
“My dear, what was that?”
She cast a suspicious glance at the toy terrier lying in serene majesty on the best cushion, and Mr. Middleton, being a man of honor, arose in defense of innocence.
“It was me, my dear,” he explained justly but ungrammatically. “I apologize; but really, it's enough to make even a human being growl.”
“What is?”
“Oh, everything—these strikes—and now my coal-shares have gone up another half.”
Mrs. Middleton returned to the happy reflection in the mirror.
“Peter, I'd like to cable that to Papa. He always said he did not believe you knew a wild-cat coal-mine from a tin tack.”
“I'm much obliged to Papa,” Middleton interrupted bitterly and with a somewhat ponderous endeavor to mimic the delicate suggestion of Fifth Avenue which tinged his wife's conversation. “I'll do him the justice of saying that he never left me in any doubt as regards his opinion of my intelligence. It was extraordinary, the number of ways he found for calling me a fool without actually using the word.”
Mrs. Middleton glanced at her husband out of the corner of her eye. He had dropped the financial supplement and was staring gloomily at the Persian carpet as though it had offered him a final and deadly insult. Mrs. Middleton became conciliatory. She perched herself on the arm of his chair; she smoothed his immaculately groomed hair into a feminine ideal of disorder; she kissed him delicately on the disturbed parting.
“Peter, Papa would never think anyone quite a fool who married me,” she said gently.
“I dare say not. I dare say he thought it was a good stroke of business for a penniless barrister—you, a rich American heiress, and I—”
She put her hands over his mouth.
“Peter, is that nice? Besides, it isn't even true. Now I come to think of it, I can't even give you credit for marrying me. To all intents and purposes it was I who proposed—at least, I got you into such a corner that no gentleman could have failed to come up to the scratch. Now, wasn't it so? Don't you remember that evening after the theater when Aunt Mathilda 'lost' us and I couldn't remember the name of our hotel, and how we autoed all round New York, and how I cried on your shoulder?”
Middleton nodded—speech being still impossible.
“Well, of course it was all what Papa would have called a 'put-up job.'” She gave a warm little chuckle. “And I don't regret it a bit. Of course I knew you were dead set on me—everybody knew that; you'd have seen the yellow press large with rumors if only you had kept your eyes open. Instead, you hung round our Avenue like a lost baby elephant, and the very creases of your trousers shrieked hopeless love and all the rest of it. Now a real Yankee would have stepped right up and rung the bell and saved me a lot of bother. But you Englishmen with your honor and your pride—brrh! I'm sure, I don't know why I wanted you so badly.”
“But you did!” Middleton managed to murmur in muffled accents.
She kissed him.
“Of course I did. Do you think I should have worked so hard otherwise? Why, I got quite scraggy over it. And now, after all, you're not happy.” She dabbed her bright eyes with a minute piece of cambric obviously not intended for tragedy, and Middleton opened his mouth to speak. But Mrs. Middleton had not finished.
“It's too bad. Haven't I proved my devotion? Haven't I given up my glorious birthright as a free American woman to come and live in slavery as an English wife? Haven't I made your gods my gods? Haven't I—”
“Susan, my dearest little woman—”
“Don't speak. Haven't I been a good wife?”
“You have.” This time he acted with determination. He put his arm round the frail dimensions of her waist and drew her down beside him into the immensity of his luxurious leather-backed chair, where she lay crumpled but contented.
“You're just perfect,” he went on. “I quite admit I was awfully in love with you before, but it's nothing to what I am now. I don't know what it is—you're so elusive. One's never quite certain of you—”
“The whole secret of successful matrimony if only we women realized it,” Mrs. Middleton supplemented sagely. Then she peeped up at him. “All the same, you're not happy. Now, are you?”
VERY gently he released himself and got up. He stood six feet, a fine measure of English manhood that yet lacked something indefinable. He seemed conscious of the unknown deficiency, for he thumped himself questionably on the chest, then sighed and went over to the window.
“I believe it's my liver,” he said drearily.
Mrs. Middleton stamped with as much violence as a Louis XIV heel will allow.
“I believe,” she declared, “that when the last trumpet sounds, you English will still be excusing your shortcomings with that hapless part of your anatomy.” Then she relented, and coming to his side, rubbed her fair head softly against his sleeve. “You old stupid elephant, what is the matter—really and truly the matter!”
He looked down at her. Although from his elevation there was not much to be seen of her save a mass of fair wavy hair and the tip of a delicate nose faintly inclined to an angle not strictly classical, the prospect should still have been sufficiently attractive to hold his attention. Instead he sighed and turned to the fashionable depression of the square outside.
“I think it must be my liver,” he repeated with the Briton's religious respect for such matters. “And then—then there is the money, Susan. It weighs on me—it oppresses me. I can't explain.”
“It wants explaining,” said Mrs. Middleton, wide-eyed. “I've heard of people being oppressed by a good many things, but not money.”
“You are different,” he interrupted quickly. “You were born to it; your father earned it—you've got some right to it.”
“Well, according to your reckoning I ought to endow a home for destitute pigs with it, anyway,” said Mrs. Middleton. 'Papa always says if it hadn't been for pigs, he would be still sweeping a store. If we owe everything to pigs, surely you don't mind owing everything to me. I'm vastly more capable of receiving gratitude—and much prettier.”
He laughed, but a little heavily, as though the laugh came with an effort.
“You dear little woman—that's all very well; but I can't help it. When I see these poor beggars loafing about the streets, I feel guilty. I've done nothing to deserve my better luck. I didn't earn—”
“Well, I guess that is true,” she agreed gayly, and then as she saw his face, she turned and laid her two small hands on his shoulders. “Peter, I'm sorry I've laughed; now I'll try and understand. But isn't your English conscience a wee bit ponderous? After all, you spend your days in dealing out money to the more or less deserving—”
“It's the least I can do,” he put in. “I'm responsible.”
“And you have me. Doesn't that make up for the responsibility?”
He looked down at her, his lips smiling, his fine features still overcast with trouble.
“That's just it; I haven't got you. I'm just a sort of chargé d'affaires for you. What do I see of you? It takes all my day to take care of the money and spend it justly. You have your clothes, your friends, your social obligations. And when we are together, there's always a butler or a footman to keep us company.” He began to pace restlessly the length of the great, luxurious room. “It would be absurd if it wasn't so tragic. We're just slaves to that infernal money.”
“Peter, you are absurd and tragic all in one.”
“I tell you, the responsibility bothers me night and day.”
“Then bother the responsibility, Peter!” She ran up to him, the soft rustle of silk skirts sounding musically in the stillness; and by tiptoeing she managed to take his face between her hands. “Peter, you're right. Don't you think I want you too? Don't you think I miss my monstrosity of an English husband when I sit chatting with those dowager frumps who only tolerate me because Papa made a million in pickled pork? I'm sick of it—just as sick of it as you are? Let's throw it all to the winds—”
“Richesse oblige!” said Peter stubbornly.
“Richesse doesn't oblige us to make martyrs of ourselves. Peter, we'll go away. We'll sell this monument of a house and have a real home; we'll take a little cottage somewhere where we can live all to ourselves, and you shall have your fishing and shooting and the rest of things you barbarians love. Peter!” She gave a little excited, triumphant laugh. “Peter—say yes!”
For an instant the clouds vanished. A flush spread over his white face.
“By Jove, little woman, how splendid that would be! A little shooting-box on the moors somewhere for the summer, and in the winter—”
“We'd travel—quite quietly, incognito. Nobody should know about the horrid money. We'd give grand tips so that everybody'd think we were hard up. We wouldn't make any friends, and there'd be nobody to bother us for loans and subscriptions. Peter—”
They broke away from one another as though a secret spring had shot them in different directions. The door had opened, and a discreet voice said:
“If you please, sir, the room is full.”
This cryptic utterance seemed to have a dire effect. Peter straightened his disarranged tie. The momentary gayety died down, and the atmosphere returned to its normal state of listlessness.
“Eh—yes, of course. I had almost forgotten. How many this morning?”
“Thirty-four, sir, all by appointment except one gentleman who wouldn't give his name. He said he didn't want anything, so I let him in first. Perhaps if you could come now, sir? They're getting impatient.”
Middleton went slowly toward the door. He had the broken, resigned air of a man mastered by fate. Mrs. Middleton stood in the middle of the hearthrug, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing defiance.
“Peter!”
He looked back over his shoulder.
“It's no good, dear. We've just got to see it through. Just think, thirty-four of them! My duty as steward—”
“Peter, I wont allow it. I will not be slave-driven like this. I was born a free American citizen; I—”
The secretary ventured to interrupt.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Middleton—Lady Digly is downstairs and says she would be glad if you could spare her a few minutes. It's about the bazaar in aid of the Society for the Relief of Destitute Spinsters. She says—”
“Thank you, Harrison,” said Mrs. Middleon meekly. “I will be down at once.”
She stood there like a pretty yacht whose sails have been suddenly left windless. There were tears in her eyes. The cambric handkerchief lay crumpled to a ball in the palm of her clenched hand. Peter looked at her, and she avoided his eye.
“You see!” he said funereally as he went out. And for the first time in their matrimonial life he got no answer.
PETER MIDDLETON'S private sitting-room bore very little resemblance to the rest of the house. It was neither rococo nor Louis XV nor old English nor anything else recognizable. It was merely plain, almost barren-looking, as though its owner had attempted a desperate flight from the refinements of wealthy and cultured civilization. There was nothing of value, not so much as a possible Rembrandt over the mantelpiece. Instead there were one or two varsity trophies on the walls, and a photograph which commemorated the contemporary existence of five beflanneled young men obviously conscious that the incident was epoch-making.
Before this solitary work of art Peter's unknown visitor had taken up his stand. He was short, slight, elastic-looking, of uncertain age. His face was small and bronzed; and to say that it was adorned by a short, sandy-colored beard is to put the matter in the most favorable light. A pair of spectacles and a heavy overhanging brow did their best to conceal the brightness of two very alert gray eyes, and a frock coat belonging to a past generation of frock coats completed the picture. Hands clasped behind his back, his legs rather wide apart, he was contemplating the relic of past days when the door opened. Immediately he swung round, and the pair of spectacles, temporarily shifted up onto his forehead, resumed their normal attitude on the bridge of the short nose with an almost audible bump.
“Middleton—my dear fellow!”
“Gregory, by all that's wonderful!”
Peter came across the room with a new delighted impulsiveness and then stopped short. His visitor had returned his outstretched hand to its former position behind his back.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but you are Peter Middleton, aren't you?”
“Of course. What on earth——”
“Oh, nothing—but I've just been looking at that old photo of you, and you've changed somewhat. A trifle like an underdone roly-poly if I may say so without undue flattery.”
“Oh, by all means—”
Middleton gave a jerky laugh and glanced surreptitiously at the looking-glass. Between the features of the lean-faced boy with his clean limbs and vigorous carriage, and the reflection there was a difference that Middleton had not noticed—or had not cared to notice before. It was painful. He saw that he had grown heavier; the eyes were lackluster, his complexion pasty, unhealthy—not unlike the indigestible that Gregory had suggested.
“I'm out of sorts—run down,” he said, and then with an effort to regain his old cheerfulness: “But it's good to see you, old fellow. Where have you sprung from?”
“Central Africa. Investigating sleeping-sickness. Those confounded Germans were right about it. Most disappointing! Arrived this morning and looked you up at the club. When I found your new address, I thought you had taken a job as flunky or something. Find you in possession. Made your pile, eh?”
“I'm married,” said Peter with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the fire.
“Oh, so you are—somebody's husband?”
“Yes,"—he tried to smile,—“I'm Mrs. Middleton's husband.”
“A first-class job, I take it.”
PETER made no answer. The eyes were still steady, but there was a little blue gleam in them that might mean trouble, Gregory adjusted the tips of his long fingers together and stared up at the ceiling.
“Gorgon, I suppose!”
Peter's hands flew out of his pockets. They were clenched, and the gleam had become a flame of wrath which transformed him.
“My wife is an angel—I adore her. If you think it was the confounded money—”
“I don't now. Your complexion misled me. I apologize.”
Peter accepted the abruptly extended hand.
“Sorry—I'm all on edge. And now I come to think of it, you may be right. It is the money. Gregory, it's a curse.”
“That's what all millionaires say—but they cling on to it tight enough.”
“Perhaps it clings to them.” Peter smiled grimly. “It's like an old man of the sea. Two months ago I helped a poor fellow out of a bad hole—two thousand pounds, it cost me; and the next day I had made five thousand pounds in copper. And I'm a fool at it, mind you. Every wild-cat scheme I touch goes up like a rocket. I'm getting richer and richer—”
“And more like the unbaked doughnut.”
“My dear Gregory, a joke, however original, ceases to be funny after the second repetition.”
Gregory ignored the protest. He drew out a stethoscope from the tail of his frock coat and slammed down the open window.
“Kindly undo your waistcoat.”
“Are you mad?”
“Tolerably sane. I'd like to hear what your heart's up to. When a man of your age goes to pieces as you've done, he gets interesting.”
Peter growled and then yielded. There seemed indeed little use in protesting. The Doctor's manner suggested violence if thwarted. Moreover Peter was feeling curiously weary and disinclined for argument. The examination lasted a quarter of an hour. Then Dr. Gregory sat back.
“Polo?” he asked laconically.
“No.”
“Shooting—hunting—golf?”
Peter laughed mirthlessly.
“Good Lord, no.”
“Profession? What about your career?”
“Aint got none. Who cares for a millionaire barrister? Why, he's an obvious fraud.”
“Then what on earth do you do with yourself?”
Peter held up a warning finger.
“Listen!” he commanded.
For a moment nothing was audible. Then from the adjoining room there came a low murmur of voices, muffled but persistent. Gregory looked up inquiringly.
“They're all in there,” said Peter in a husky whisper, “thirty-four of them.”
“Thirty-four what? Maniacs?”
“Come and look.”
He tiptoed across the room, Gregory at his heels, and softly opened a door hidden behind a curtain. “Look!” he commanded. Gregory obeyed with the air of a man requested to examine a new muscle. He inserted a suspicious eye to the crack and then drew back.
“Great bacilli diphtheritis!” he muttered. “What on earth are they?”
Peter shrugged his shoulders. His face was haggard and desperate.
“Deserving cases,” he said hoarsely. “Thirty-four of them—all deserving, mark you—at least they say so! Some of them terrify me. That wizened little fellow in the green-black suit is a missionary in the South Seas, and every time he comes, he has a fresh horror about some fellow who got roasted alive—on the principle that the bigger the horror the bigger the check. The large lady next him wants one hundred pounds for sending out trousers to the aborigines. She says trousers are the first step toward Christian morality. Are they? How do I know? Never thought about it. My secretary doesn't know either. He weeds out the undeserving, and he's had two breakdowns, poor fellow!”
“And now you're going to have one.”
“I dare say. Sometimes I feel like it.”
“Does this happen every day?”
“Thirty-four is the lowest.”
Gregory rubbed his hands.
“You'll pack your trunks to-morrow and get out of this,” he said decisively. “Take twelve months shooting tigers, and then—”
“I can't.”
“Why not? You've money enough. Your wife wont object?”
“Object? She'd come too. She's as plucky as—as she's pretty. But I wont. Don't you see?” He caught Gregory by the shoulders and shook him backward and forward in a burst of violence. “I simply can't. I'm a slave. I'm chained down. I've tried to break loose, but each time my conscience has brought me back and tied me up tighter. I'm rich by fraud—by a chance that I never deserved. There are a hundred thousand fellows wiser, better, cleverer than I, and they're slaving while I sit here and—and eat my head off. I tell you, the only excuse for my existence is my ability to help these fellows, and I must—not just by delegating my authority to paid philanthropists, but by finding them myself.”
“Do you think you'll find them there?” demanded the Doctor with a scornful finger pointed at the door.
“I don't know. It's my only chance. I must do something.”
Dr. Gregory took up his soft hat. “Taken in connection with the frock coat, this hat was startlingly effective.
“Well, my friend,” he said, “I am now going back to have a bath. From the point of view of civilized society, I ought to have had it before, but I was in a hurry to see you, and in Central Africa one forgets how important these things are. In the meantime I'll give you my verdict. You've overworked your heart and your head, and you've eaten too much. At your present mode of living I give you two years; at the end of the first you'll be a crock, and at the end of the second you'll be a corpse. So now you know.”
Peter stared at him, aghast but not incredulous.
“Gregory, I used to be as sound as a bell.”
“You used to live a reasonable life.”
Peter's chin squared into hard lines. “I can't help it,” he said. “It wont alter things.”
“Of course not. You always were as obstinate as a mule. I shall speak to Mrs. Middleton—”
“I forbid you!”
Gregory considered the set, resolute face and shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, certainly. It's not my funeral. Good morning.”
“Gregory, old fellow, don't be angry. I can't help myself. I'll do anything else. Wont anything else help me?”
“Bankruptcy!” was the blunt reply.
They said no more. Peter with an irresolute glance at the door, from whence came sounds of voluble impatience, followed his friend downstairs.
They shook hands gravely.
“You're a fool,” said the older man.
“I know it. I was born so. See you later?”
“It depends where you're going,” Gregory snarled back at him and slammed the front door.
ON his way upstairs Peter encountered his wife. She came out of the drawing-room, her face flushed, her eyes bright.
“Peter, who was that funny little man?” she asked.
“Dr. Gregory, an old friend,” he answered. He looked at her with a sudden poignant thrill of emotion. The verdict had left him cold—until now. The idea of becoming a “crock,” eventually a corpse, had not seemed particularly appalling or even new. Now he realized. He was going to leave it all, just because he couldn't adjust his health or his conscience to a state foreign to his birth. He was going to leave her; and she was so pretty, so young—only twenty-two, three years younger than he. And they had been immensely happy, immensely in love.
“Susan!” he exclaimed. He held out his arms, and she flew into them. They clung to each other like two children conscious of a certain cloud of unreasoning terror. When she looked up, her face was wet with tears.
“Peter, what is it? How you frighten me! A doctor? Are you ill? Did he examine you?”
“Y-e-s,” he stammered, startled into the truth.
“What did he say? Oh, Peter—”
The white terror in her face steadied him. He brushed the disordered hair from her eyes.
“He said—he said it was nothing at all, Susan.”
“Peter—how you frightened me!” She drew a deep sigh of quivering relief, but her eyes never left his face. “Peter, you're telling me the truth?”
“My dear, how can you ask such a thing!”
She grew suddenly quite calm and cheerful.
“Of course not. How could there be anything the matter with such a large and ponderous piece of humanity? Give me your arm. I want to tell you, that wretched woman has made me take a crochet stall and—”
Gently but resolutely he disengaged himself.
“Another time, sweetheart. I've got those people, you know. They're waiting.”
“Oh, and I'm out to lunch.”
“Bad luck! Well, to-night?”
“There'll be the butler.”
He sighed.
“I can't help it,” he repeated listlessly. “There are thirty-four of them.”
He went on upstairs with heavy feet, and she stood and watched him. Her head was a little on one side, and she was frowning. When he had disappeared, she went into the library and raked out a medical directory.
“I'M Mrs. Middleton,” she said.
From behind a barricade of disordered furniture, still draped in dusty linen sheets, Dr. Gregory examined his visitor with the irascibility of a man who finds his best-laid plans thwarted.
“Very interesting! From which statement I may no doubt presume that Mr. Middleton is your husband?”
“Sure, you've struck it right off, Doctor. And I've just come for five minutes of your valuable time.”
“Ah—eh—matter of personal pleasure, or professionally?”
“For what are you at home, Doctor?”
“For neither,” he rasped, his irritable fingers playing with the rim of his spectacles. “I arrived from Central Africa yesterday morning, and I told my man to admit no one.”
Mrs. Middleton laughed musically. “I reckon neither of you know how to manage a woman,” she said. “Your young fellow downstairs had a lot to say, but I just smiled at him and came right up.”
“So I see. Thomas is a fool.”
“Do you really think so?'
Dr. Gregory, lowering at her out of the corners of his small irate eyes, merely grunted. Without invitation she had placed herself in his best chair—the only one available—and with her head thrown back against the black oak carving, was smiling upon him with unruffled sweetness. Accustomed to the visions of more or less adorned females of another clime and another color, the Doctor was vaguely impressed.
“As you're here, I suppose I'd better make a fee out of you,” he consented grimly. “It would be unnecessary to ask you to sit down. Now, what's the matter with you? Nerves?”
“Do I look 'nervy'?”
Dr. Gregory snorted. “None of them do,” he said. “They're all as flourishing as you are, but they're all dreadfully ill just the same. I set them to scrub floors. That's why I'm not in Harley Street.”
“Well, right away it's not nerves. It's my husband.”
He sat up, literally and figuratively.
“Your—”
“I said 'husband.' What's the matter with him?”
Dr. Gregory was now not only mollified but alarmed. He threw a wistful, uncertain glance at the door.
“My good lady, how should I know?” he stammered.
“You examined him yesterday.”
“Well, suppose I did—”
“And you gave him some bad news.”
“How do you know?”
Mrs. Middleton smiled subtly. “He told me that you had said there was nothing the matter with him.”
“Well?”
“Well, I guess you'd be the first doctor I've met on either side of the pond that hasn't scented out one fatal malady in a patient. When Peter said that, I knew he was just lying. So I hunted you up in the directory and came right round.”
Dr. Gregory thrust his hands into his pockets. He was cornered, and his eyes sparkled with malice and anger.
“You're the matter with him,” he announced.
Mrs. Middleton stiffened in her chair. “You mean,” she said slowly, “I have made him ill—done him harm?”
“Yes.” He faced her defiantly and then looked hastily in another direction. Mrs. Middleton had grown very pale.
“How?” she asked, scarcely above her breath.
“He married the wrong woman,” he said brutally. Then he collapsed onto a stool behind his table. He was angry with himself, and that was a feeling he could least of all tolerate. Why had the woman come to worry him?
“I guess I don't understand,” she said falteringly. “I tried to make Peter happy. I knew Englishwomen are different, and I tried to be like them. Say, you wouldn't ever guess that I was an American, would you?”
HE cast a pain-stricken glance at her. She was looking at him with a pathetic pleading which terrified him.
“I—really, perhaps some of your expressions—”
“I know. They just break out—like measles. But I've done my best, and I thought Peter was—was satisfied. But now you say I've done him harm.”
“Indirectly—indirectly,” interrupted the Doctor, rapping the table with his knuckles. “You misunderstand me, no doubt. You are everything that's charming. Peter seemed—devoted. It's not that; it—it's the confounded money.”
Mrs. Middleton raised a pair of beautiful eyebrows in sad bewilderment. “Money?” she echoed.
“Yes, your money.” He got up, his old indignation aflame. “You probably wont understand. You are too American. But I knew Peter three years ago, and I saw him yesterday. And I say: 'Damn your money!'”
“Doctor!”
“Apologize! Forgot myself. But I'm put out. I knew Peter at Oxford; he was the best runner and rower that we had. He was as clean-limbed as—as a stag, and as tough as a rhinoceros. When he came up, he hadn't a sou—and when he had, it was his own hard-earned money. There wasn't a finer, better fellow on earth, or one with a finer future. And now what is he? He's just your husband—Mrs. Middleton's husband—without a job except that of doling out your infernal—apologize!—money and seeing that you're not cheated more than he can help. He's an overworked automatic cash-machine with an infernal memory of a time when he was a man, ambitious, healthy—”
He stopped and sank into his chair again, his hands in his pockets, his chin on his chest, his short legs stretched out in eloquent despair. The dreaded catastrophe had broken over him. Mrs. Middleton was crying.
“Go on,” she said, while two very large tears trembled on her downcast lashes. “I'm beginning to understand and—and I'd rather know everything.”
“There's not much more to tell,” he said gruffly. “He's developed a conscience, which no healthy man ought to have, and a heart-trouble which will finish him in two years unless—”
“Doctor, anything that money can do—”
He bounded up.
“Everything that money can do will kill him. What he wants is to be thrown out neck and crop, to have to fend for himself and become a healthy, self-respecting man again. Can you do that?”
“I can't—divorce him.”
“Of course not.”
“I can't put him on an allowance.” She was speaking half to herself, and he snorted, bitterly triumphant.
“You can't do anything. Peter ought to have married a woman whom he had to support and protect. Your money is just dry rot for him. You'd better tell that to your people over there. It may clear their ideas as to the value of the almighty dollar.”
She got up. The tears had dried, and her eyes were very bright.
“I guess you don't love me much, Doctor?”
“You've spoiled my friend,” he retorted in defiance.
“I understand. But if—if I send Peter to you in a year's time strong and happy, will you shake hands?”
“I'll shake hands and I'll apologize,” he conceded curtly.
“Au revoir, then—and thank you.”
Discreetly she had laid two gold-pieces on the cover of the table. He pushed it roughly toward her.
“I don't want—”
“Dry rot? Oh, Doctor, I'm sure you're quite healthy enough to run the risk.” There was a flash of gay malice in her eyes as she turned to him from the door. “And there is always Harley Street to be remembered.”
He bowed with exaggerated courtesy.
“Good morning, Mrs. Middleton.”
“Good morning, Doctor.”
She was gone. He rang the bell furiously.
“Butterfly!” he muttered in savage condemnation. But it had struck him that the consulting-room was unbearably dark and dingy.
THE last of the deserving had taken their departure. There had been thirty of them, and not one had stated his case in under ten minutes. Consequently Peter sat at the table, listless yet conscious of an uneasily throbbing pulse, and stared stupidly at his secretary, who was sorting out the evening mail.
The secretary glanced at him. “It's half-past seven, sir,” he said discreetly.
Middleton started.
“Eh, yes—of course. I must go and dress. That'll do, Phillips. I don't want you again to-night.”
But when the secretary had taken his quiet departure, Middleton still did not move. He was not conscious of any particular train of thought, and yet his subconscious self was looking into the immediate future with the shrinking revolt of utter weariness. The long dinner for which he had no appetite, the voiceless yet persistent attention of those liveried mutes, even the vision of his wife in her full evening splendor, floated before his mind's eye and nauseated him. He was weary of everything—his very affections seemed to have become numb and lifeless. Susan and he had quarreled four times in the last four days. Was it his fault or hers?
The door opened, and she stood before him. It was as though his mental picture of her had suddenly taken corporeal form. She was already dressed for dinner—a svelte figure in gold brocade, and her fair hair beneath the electric light was like a burnished copper crown set above a face as beautiful— and as hard.
“It's time to dress, Peter,” she said coldly.
He got up at once and began arranging his papers in dazed haste.
“Yes, I know. I'm dog tired. I wont be long.”
She came slowly across the room, and he realized that she held a letter in her hand. She threw it carelessly on the table.
“I've had a note from the Rivers,” she said. “They have asked us both to motor down with them to Ranleigh to-morrow. I have just telephoned our acceptance.”
“Our acceptance?” He echoed her faint emphasis on the pronoun. “In the first place, you know I dislike the Rivers. I do not consider them fit company for my wife. I have given you my reasons—”
“They are my friends,” she interrupted sharply, “and I have accepted.”
He drew himself up, and their eyes met. Something in her voice and manner seemed to rasp along his raw nerves. His pulses began to beat faster.
“It is impossible that I should accompany you, Susan.”
“Why?”
“In the first place, it would be flying in the face of my own opinion.”
She laughed defiantly.
“How righteous, Peter! You dislike the Rivers because they are {{wg:parvenu|parvenus}}. Pray, what am I but a parvenu! And you are my husband who spends Papa's ill-gotten gains.”
“Susan!”
She flinched before the sudden blaze in his eyes. Then she held her head higher.
“Isn't it true?”
He turned away and walked unsteadily toward the mantelpiece. A half-forgotten adage of his gentle Puritan mother signaled to him from his childhood: “Count twenty before you answer in anger.” In his blind distress it seemed to lay a steadying hand on him. He answered quietly but with averted face.
“Obviously it is true. My dislike for the Rivers is based on other grounds, as you know; but since you like them, I have no more to say. But I cannot accompany you. You must go alone.”
“I always go alone.” Her voice shook, he thought, with resentment. “People are beginning to talk. Does it never occur to you in what position your neglect places me?”
“Neglect?” He swung around. “How can you talk of neglect? But I have my work—”
“Which consists of throwing my money away to other people—”
A STIFLED exclamation broke from his lips. She was looking at him with an exasperating scornful amusement in her gray eyes. Still he clung to the last shreds of his self-restraint.
“I give away the money you—you allotted to me—”
“Your common sense must tell you that it is my money, all the same.”
She had turned away, and he could not see her face. With a last effort he mastered himself. Even in that moment of goaded pride and long-stifled bitterness something of the old tenderness crept into his voice.
“Susan—little Susan, little wife, what has happened? A few days ago we were so happy. There was not a cloud between us. And now—dear, can't you understand? Just because it is not my money, I must do something to ease my sense of the—the unfairness of it all. I thought by spending my life—”
“I do not choose that my money should be squandered in trying to bring about the millennium.”
“Then—”
“And I expect you to accompany me when I wish you to do so.”
“You mean I am not much more than—than a bought lapdog!”
She laughed unsteadily.
“Susan—take care—” he stammered. “You are riding for a fall. I am not an American myself to be browbeaten even by you.”
“Peter, it is for you to take care now! One doesn't root out one's nationality, and I'm an American still—”
“I know it. You are more American than—than my wife.” He strode to the door and then turned. “You can choose,” he said hoarsely. He could not see that her face was more ashen than his own. He only saw the erect defiant figure which seemed to embody all the harshness of her words and voice. With a sudden flash of memory he added: “Be careful—there is a 'too late' in life.”
She steadied. “I shall go my own way until you have earned the right to ask me to go yours.”
“You despise me for living—as I do?”
She faced him with a deep-drawn breath. “Yes.”
They eyed each other in blank silence. Peter's hands relaxed.
“You are right,” he said simply. “I am despicable. I see it now. I let my love get the better of my self-respect—and that's always fatal. Very well! I am going. You will find everything—your money—in perfect order. You can make what excuses you like—to everybody. Say I am ill. That will keep them quiet. And after a time they will forget to ask. At any rate I sha'n't come back until I have put things right—until I have earned you and won my place in the world—and in your life. Good-by.”
He looked at her for the last time as though trying to imprint something on his memory. She did not move. She stood like a statue under the shaded light, rigid, indifferent. He went out. She heard the door close and his steady step along the corridor. Then one white, jeweled hand stole out and gripped the edge of the table. Her eyes had closed, and her underlip was kept tight between the small teeth.
“I am an American citizen,” she whispered brokenly. “I am an American citizen. I wont—I wont cry.”
The hall door slammed. The sound seemed to thrill through her like a current of electricity. She ran swiftly to the window and drew aside the heavy curtains and peered out into the foggy darkness. Down below, a familiar figure passed through the circle of yellow lamplight, hesitated—looked up.
“Peter— Peter—oh, my Peter!”
But it was only a choking whisper which scarcely carried across the great silent room. The familiar figure passed on slowly into the darkness.
“Oh, Peter, if you only knew!”
The “American citizen” in all her splendor dropped on her knees. With her face buried in her white arms, she cried her heart out.
(“The Romantic Lodger,” the second delightful story in these “Adventures of Mrs. Middleton's Husband,” will appear in the next, the September, issue of the Green Book Magazine.)
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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