"Don't you know ... we thought you did ... Spalton's new wife ... the
one his first wife got a divorce from him for?"
And I heard the story, part of which I knew, but not the final details.
Spalton's first wife had been an easy-going, amiable creature ... fair
and pretty in a soft, female way ... a teacher in the local Sunday
school ... one who accepted all the conventions as they were ... who
could not understand anyone not conforming to them ... life was easier
and more comfortable that way....
Spalton's originality and genius would in the end have of itself
produced a rupture between them ... few women are at home with genius,
much as they clasp their hands in ecstasy over it, as viewed on the
lecture and concert platform....
But the wedge that drove them apart was entered when his first wife,
Anne, brought into their married life, Dorothy, a fellow teacher, a
visiting friend.
Dorothy was so thin as to be stringy of body. She had a sharp
hatchet-face, eyes with the colour of ice in them ... a cold, blue-grey.
She was a woman of culture, yet at the same time she was possessed of a
great instinct for organisation and business enterprise--just what was
needed for the kind of thing Spalton was trying to inaugurate at Eos.
She fell in readily with the Master's schemes ... even with his
price-tags on objects of art, his egregious overvaluation of hand
illumined books ... which his wife, with old-fashioned honesty, rebuked
him for.
An affinity of like-mindedness grew up between Spalton and this intense,
homely woman, Dorothy ... whose face, like that of all clever, homely
women, grew to a beauty in his eyes, that mere beauty which plastic form
can never attain.
There was a local busybody of a minister, and it was he who first
intimated to the then Mrs. Spalton that her dear and intimate friend,
was betraying her....
There followed the usual spying and publicity ... Mrs. Spalton won her
divorce....
* * * * *
But this was after several years. Long before the divorce was granted
John and Dorothy were aware of a tangible fruit of their love.... I had
often wondered why the Master so ardently, so often, wrote eloquently in
defense of the superior qualities of illegitimate children....
Dorothy bore their child ... a girl ... and went away to teach in a
smart school somewhere in the East, under an assumed name....
Now, after many years, Spalton and she married.
* * * * *
I saw in the sitting room a wonderful girl. She had shining, abundant
hair, and a face rendered superlatively beautiful by the glowing of
vivacity, understanding, feminine vitality behind it and through it,
like a lamp held up within. She was absorbed in the new exhibit of
Gresham's that hung on the walls of the guest room ... she wore a short,
bouncing, riding skirt, and carried a quirt in her hand.
I walked up to her, fascinated. Without letting her know who I was I
quoted Poe's _To Helen_ to her. She stood, smiling sweetly, as if it
were the most usual thing in the world, to have a lean, wild-faced
stranger address her with a poem.
"That's the way I feel about you!" I ended.
She gave a lovely laugh ... held out both her hands, dropping the quirt
on the floor ... took my hands and leaned back gaily, like a child.
"Oh, I know who you are ... you're Razorre ... father wrote me a lot
about you ... when I lived East ... you were one of his pet 'nuts'!"
We sat there and conversed a long time. She talked of Socrates and Plato
as if she had broken bread with them ... she discussed science, history,
art as if wisdom and understanding were nearer her desire than anything
else....
She was the child of "John" and Dorothy.
* * * * *