Short Fiction

There is in New York a club called the Balmoral, which has two peculiarities⁠—no one ever goes there much before midnight, and it is the only place in town where you can get anything fit to eat at four o’clock in the morning. The members are politicians of the higher grade, men about town, and a sprinkle of nondescripts. In the unhallowed inspiration of a moment, Alphabet Jones, the novelist⁠—in polite society Mr. A. B. Fenwick Chisholm-Jones⁠—baptized it the Smallpox, a name which has stuck tenaciously, the before-mentioned members being usually pitted⁠—against each other. Of the many rooms of the club, one, it should be explained, is the most enticing. It is situated on an upper floor, and the siren that presides therein is a long table dressed in green. Her name is Baccarat.

One night last February, Alphabet Jones rattled up to the door in a vagabond hansom. He was thirsty, impecunious, and a trifle tired. He had been to a cotillon, where he had partaken of champagne, and he wanted to get the taste of it out of his throat. He needed five hundred dollars, and in his card-case there were only two hundred and fifty. The bar of the Athenaeum Club he knew at that hour was closed, possible moneylenders were in bed, and it was with the idea of killing the two birds of the legend that he sought the Balmoral.

He encountered there no difficulty in slaking his thirst; and when, in one draught, which brought to his tonsils a suggestion of art, science, and Wagner combined, he swallowed a brandy-and-soda, he felt better, and looked about to see who might be present.

Eden had but recently returned to town and the claims of mantua-makers and milliners were oppressive. They took her time, they came to her in the morning, and she, with the courtesy of kings, returned the visit in the afternoon. But to little purpose. They were vexatious people, she discovered. They deceived her wantonly. They promised and did not fulfill. The livelong day they had irritated her, they had obtained her confidence by false pretences, and now, after a round of interviews each more profitless than the last, on reaching her house the dust of shops was on her mantle, and she could have gone in a corner and sworn.

Moreover it was late, dinner would presently be served. Arnswald, she learned, had already arrived, he was in the parlor with her husband, and as she hurried to her room she told herself that she would have to dress in haste, an operation which to her was always fertile in annoyance. An entire hour was never too much. But her maid was agile, dexterous of hand, and before the clock marked seven she was fully equipped, arrayed for dinner and the opera as well.

On leaving the room, Eden left her vexation behind her. It had been fleeting and inoffensive as the anger of a canary. And now, on descending the stairs, she was in great good spirits again, the crimes of mantua-makers and milliners were forgotten, and she prepared to meet her husband and her guest. Halfway on her journey to the drawing room, however, she discovered that she was empty-handed; she had omitted to take a fan and she called to her maid to bring her one. And as she called the front doorbell rang.

The merriment had deserted her lips, the color had gone from her cheeks. The hand which held the letter fell with it to her side. In her face was the contraction of pain. She looked at her husband. “Whose life is it that you have filled?” she asked, and her voice, that had rippled with laughter a moment before, became suddenly chill and subdued.

In the doorway before her the butler appeared in silent announcement that dinner was served.

Arnswald made a step forward. “The letter is mine, Mrs. Usselex,” he said, “I⁠—”

“Oh,” she murmured, with a sigh that might have been accounted one of relief. “Oh, it is yours, is it?” And eying him inquisitorially for a second’s space, she placed the letter in his hand.

“We may as well go in to dinner,” she added at once, and with a glance at her husband she led the way.

About her on either side were wastes of black, and in the goaf, by way of clearing, but one thing was discernible, the fealty of Adrian. To save her from pain he had taken the letter on himself; he had accepted her contempt that he might assure her peace of mind. Through the dismal farce which had been played at her expense his loyalty constituted the one situation which was deserving of praise. With a gesture she dismissed her husband; it was as though he had ceased to exist. It was not him that she had espoused; it was a figure garbed in fine words. She had detected the travesty, the mask had fallen, with the actor she was done. She had never been mated, and now she was divorced. And as she stood, her hands clenched and pendant, the currents of her thought veering from master to clerk, the portiere furthermost from her was drawn aside, the butler appeared an instant in the doorway, he mumbled a name, Dugald Maule entered the room, and the portiere fell back.

“I made sure of finding you,” he announced jauntily, as he approached.

“I am married to a woman who is not my wife.”

It was on a liner, after dinner. The big ship had lurched. Into the smoking-room where I sat Lord Silverbridge had lurched with it. He had dropped into a seat beside me. I had asked how he did. It was in answer to that question that he made this curious remark.

As he spoke he looked down and away and ran his long, thin fingers through his bright, thick hair.

“What!” I exclaimed.

“And she is one of your compatriots, too.”

Lady Silverbridge⁠—formerly Miss Fanny Bunker⁠—was a Bostonian. Of that I was perfectly aware. At her wedding I had sent with my felicitations a fish-knife. I had not been previously honored with her acquaintance. But Silverbridge I had known through a series of tolerably orgiac semesters at Heidelberg, where his name was merely Jones.

Through what miracles of Death such processions of relatives were mown that from nobody he had become peer, it is idle to burden this narrative. Yet the fact that we had worn identical student caps and fought identical student duels had eluded time; it had eluded, too, transitions and still survived. It was to this survival that I attributed the rather intimate confidence of his curious remark.

Of the purport of it I had not so much as an idea. The day previous I had embarked at Cherbourg for New York and found Silverbridge on board. It was then early in August. His marriage had taken place in London late in May.