I was in the locker-room of the country-club, getting dressed after the
best afternoon of golf I had ever had. I had just beaten Paisley
"one-up" in eighteen holes of the hardest kind of sledding.
If you knew Paisley you'd understand just why I was so glad to beat
him. He is a most insufferably conceited ass about his golf, for a man
who plays as badly as he does; in addition to which he usually beats
me. It's not that Paisley plays a better game, but he has a way of
making me pull my drive or over-approach just by his confounded manner
of looking at me when I am getting ready to play.
We usually trot along about even until we come to the seventh hole--in
fact, I'm usually ahead at the seventh--and then conversation does me
in. You see, the seventh hole can be played two ways. There's a small
clay bank that abuts the green and you can either play around or over
it to the hole, which lies directly behind. The real golfers play over
with a good mashie shot that lands them dead on the green, but dubs,
like Paisley, play around with two easy mid-iron shots. When we get to
the place where the choice must be made, Paisley suggests that I go
around, which makes me grip my mashie firmly, recall all the things I
have read in the little book about how to play a mashie shot, and let
drive with all my force, which usually lands me somewhere near the top
of the clay bank, where it would take a mountain goat to play the next
shot. After that, Paisley and I exchange a few hectic observations and
my temperature and score mount to the highest known altitude.
Of course, every now and then, I forget my stance and Paisley long
enough to send the ball in a beautiful parabola right on to the green,
and when I do--oh, brother!--the things I say to Paisley put him in
such a frame of mind that I could play the rest of the course with a
paddle and a basket-ball and still beat him. This particular afternoon
he had tried to play the seventh hole as it should be played, and
though we had both foozled, I had won the hole and romped triumphantly
home with the side of pig.
I was gaily humming to myself as I put on my clothes when James
Felderson came in. His face was drawn and his mouth was set in a way
that was utterly foreign to Jim, whose smile has done more to keep
peace in committee meetings and to placate irate members than all other
harmonizing agencies in the club put together. There was something
unnatural, too, about his eyes, as though he had been drinking.
"Have you seen Helen?" he demanded in a thick voice.
"No. Not to-day," I answered. "What's the matter, Jim? Anything
wrong?"
Felderson has been my law partner ever since he married my sister
Helen. I had left him at the office just before lunch and he had
seemed then as cheerful and unperturbed as usual.
"Helen has gone with Frank Woods!" he burst out, his voice breaking as
he spoke.
It took a second for me to grasp the meaning of what he said, then I
grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Jim, Jim, what are you saying?"
My sister--left her husband--run off with another man! I had read of
such things in stories, but never had I believed that real people, in
real life and of real social position, ever so disgraced themselves.
Every one knew that Frank Woods had been seeing a lot of Helen, and
several close friends had asked me if Jim knew the man's reputation. I
had even spoken to Helen, only to be laughed at, and assured that it
was the idle gossip of scandal-mongers. That she should have left Jim,
darling old Jim, for Frank Woods, or any other man, was unthinkable.
Jim sank on a bench and turned a face to me that had grown utterly
haggard.
"It's true, Bupps! I found this on the table when I went home to
lunch."
He held out a crumpled note written in Helen's rather mannish back-hand.
"Jim,
"It is now ten-thirty. Frank is coming for me at eleven. He has made
me realize that, loving him the way I do, I would be doing you a
horrible injustice to keep up the wretched pretense of being your wife.
"Had you left any other way open, I would have taken it, but you
refused a divorce. I hate to hurt you the way I must, but try to
understand and forgive me.
"Helen."
I turned toward Jim. His chin was sunk in his hands. Two men came in
from the tennis-courts and nodded as they went by.
"What have you done?" I asked.
He raised his head, and on his face was written incalculable misery.
"Nothing!" he answered, dropping his hands hopelessly. "What can I do,
except let them go and get a divorce as soon as possible? It's my
fault. After we--quarreled the other night, she asked me to divorce
her, and I refused. God, Bupps! If you only knew how much I love her
and how hard I've tried to make her love me. And she did love me till
Woods came along."
I hurried up my dressing, turning over in my mind the details of Jim's
married life. In the light of the latest developments, I realized the
painful fact that I was partly to blame myself. Helen hadn't really
loved Jim when she married him. Oh, she'd loved him in the same way
she'd loved a lot of other men whom she'd been more or less engaged to
at one time or another. She had married Jim, because it had been the
thing to do that year, to get married; and she realized that Jim loved
her more and could give her more than any of the others. Where I came
in was that I had urged her to marry Jim because he was the best man in
the world and because I wanted him for my brother-in-law.
I remembered now how cold Helen had been, even during their engagement,
trumping up almost any excuse to keep from spending an evening alone
with the man who was to be her husband. It had made me so hot that I
had reproached her even in Jim's presence. My words didn't seem to
affect Helen any, but they did affect Jim a lot. He had taken me for a
long ride in his car and filled me full of moonshine about how he was
unworthy of her and how he would win her love after they were married.
I was in such sympathy with him that I tried to believe it true,
although I knew Helen as only a younger brother can know a sister. I
knew that she had been pampered and petted ever since she was a child;
that she had never shown much affection for father and mother, who were
her slaves, while toward me, who had insulted and made fun of her, she
was almost effusive. With this in mind, I had urged Jim to neglect
her, to "treat her rough," but when a man is head-over-heels in love
with a girl, what's the good of advice? To tell him to mistreat her
was like telling a Mohammedan to spit in the face of the prophet.
They had been married a little over a year when Frank Woods came to
Eastbrook on war business for the French Government. He had been in
Papa Joffre's Army during part of the mêlée, wore the _Croix de Guerre_
with several palms, and could hold a company of people enthralled with
stories of his experiences. Whether he had a right to the decorations,
or even the uniform, no one was quite sure, but it set off every good
point of his massive, well-built frame. He would stand in front of the
fire and tell of air-scraps in such a way that, while he never
mentioned the hero by name, it was easy to guess that "hero" and Frank
Woods were synonymous. He could dance, ride, play any game and shoot
better than the best of us, and when he sat at the piano and sang,
every man looked at his wife or his fiancée and wondered where the
lightning was going to strike. For although he was a very proper young
bachelor for months, showing no unseemly interest in women, we all of
us, I think, secretly felt that he was setting the stage for a "grand
coup."
If he had singled out Helen from the first, he couldn't have played his
game better, for his seeming indifference to her loveliness piqued her
almost to madness. During the early months of our entrance in the war
he was called back to France, and every man in Eastbrook breathed a
sigh of relief. There wasn't one of us who could say why we thought
him a cad, but just the same, I doubt if there was a father in
Eastbrook who would willingly have given his daughter to him. He was
too much of the ideal lover to make a good husband. There was
something about him, too, that made no man want to claim him as a
particular friend, but perhaps it was because we were all jealous.
While most of the younger men of the town were in France, or, like Jim
and myself, in a training-camp, Frank Woods came back, and this time
there was no mistaking whom he had picked out for his attentions.
Until the war was over and Jim home, it was not noticeable, for he was
most meticulous in his behavior, but with Jim busy trying to straighten
out our tangled practise, Woods lost no time in taking advantage of his
opportunities. And there had been opportunities enough, heaven knows,
with Jim surrounded by clients, yet trying in his clumsy, lovable way
to remonstrate with Helen for seeing so much of Woods. My interference
had only increased his opportunities, for the evening I told her what
people were saying, she quarreled with Jim, and as a result he threw
himself into his work with an energy in which enthusiasm had no part.
All the time these thoughts were running through my head--and they ran
much faster than I can set them down--I had been throwing my clothes
on, knowing something had to be done, yet what that something was I
couldn't for the life of me figure out.
"Come on, Jim!" I said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him from
his dejected position.
"Where to?" he responded wearily.
"First of all, we're going to shut this thing up. _The Sun_ would like
nothing better than to spread it thick all over the front page of their
filthy sheet."
"You're right, old boy! I'd forgotten about the newspapers. It would
be horrible for Helen to have her name dragged through the mud."
"I wasn't thinking of Helen," I responded testily, "but a lot of cheap
notoriety won't help our law practise any."
All the spirit seemed to have seeped out of his system, so I pushed him
into my car, preferring to take the wheel rather than have him drive.
I can always think better when I have a steering wheel in my hands, and
knowing with what speed Jim drove ordinarily, I didn't care to trust my
precious body to him in his overwrought condition.
We were just backing into the drive when one of the servants came
running from the club.
"Oh, Mr. Thompson!" he called.