THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY
In Fanny's drawing-room the next evening, at six minutes after eight,
Loftus appeared. Although tolerably punctual, others had preceded him.
On a sofa with Fanny was Sylvia Waldron. On another sofa were Mrs.
Waldron and Melanchthon Orr. Annandale, who seemed to have lost flesh,
was standing in the middle of the floor.
"How are you?" he asked as Loftus entered.
"And you?"
"They did me," Annandale answered. "Atch., U. P., St. Paul, Steel, I
had the list." As he spoke he mopped himself. Then in confidential
aside, he added, "It has affected my stomach. It is as though I had a
hole there. Will you have a sherry and bitters?"
Loftus moved forward to where Sylvia and Fanny sat. Fanny gave him a
finger; Sylvia, a little distant nod. She was dressed in white. About
her neck was a string of pearls. Fanny was in a frock of tender
asparagus green fluttered with lace, very cool to the eye and cut
rather low.
"I hope Arthur isn't hurt much," said Loftus.
"Are you?" Fanny asked.
"No. I have been selling. Today I covered. It was not easy, though.
Everybody was crazy. I have never seen a panic before."
"It will be a generation before you see another," Orr, from across the
room, called out.
At the further end of the room Harris, Annandale's former valet, since
promoted to the position of butler, appeared, smug-faced and solemn,
in silent announcement of dinner.
For the time being the subject was abandoned, but presently when at
table all were seated it was resumed.
"It will cost the country $50,000,000," said Orr. He was at Fanny's
left. At her right was Loftus.
"Well," said Annandale, emptying a glass of Ruinart, "I am glad I
don't have to produce it." Emptying another glass he added, "I have
produced all I could."
"I think I do not quite understand," said Mrs. Waldron, who led a
highly unspeculative life and seldom saw the evening papers.
Orr and Annandale both hastened to enlighten her. Ever since the
Presidential election there had been a boom in the Street, a soaring
market in which the whole community, down to and including messenger
boys and chorus girls, had joined. On this, the ninth of May, it had,
in the slang of the Street, just "busted." Since the great black day
of a generation previous, never had there been such a crash, so many
landed gentry, so much paper profit sunk into such absolute loss.
In the flow of talk Fanny turned to Loftus.
"How is the lady?"
Loftus, whose mouth was full of jellied consomme, did not answer for a
moment. Then he made a slight gesture. "She has gone."
"Already?"
"I had your orders!"
Fanny looked at him wonderingly. "How did she take it?"
"What difference does it make? She has gone. Is not that sufficient?"
"For you, no doubt. But for her! No; really I am sorry. When you told
her that you loved her I am sure she thought you meant forever. I am
sure, too, that you meant for a week. It is a shame to treat a girl
like that and then turn her loose."
Loftus had begun to busy himself with some fish. He put his fork
down. "But, confound it, you told me to."
"Did I? I forgot. Besides, you are not usually so obedient."
Loftus turned to his fish. "It seems to me that there is rather a
change in the temperature. Isn't there?" he asked.
"But, Royal, I cannot help feeling sorry for that girl. I cannot help
feeling, too, that if you can get rid of her in this lively fashion
you might do the same with me."
"In that case it only shows what a simpleton you are. If I have had
anything to do with her at all it was only because I couldn't have
anything to do with you."
"Well, hardly in that way. But you could have asked me to marry you."
"I have since."
"Say, rather, I asked you."
"Anyway, the other evening it was settled. If now you have changed
your mind----"
"Regarding you my mind will never change. I shall speak to Arthur
tonight."
"What's that?" called Annandale who, from the other end of the table,
had caught the mention of his name. "What's that?"
"We were talking stocks," Loftus answered. "Do you know how money was
today?"
"I know it was beastly tight."
"And that seems to me," Fanny with one of her limpid smiles remarked,
"such a vulgar condition for money to be in."
"Did I hear you ask," Orr inquired, "how money was today? It was sixty
per cent."
"Dear me, Melanchthon," Mrs. Waldron exclaimed. "I think I must get
you to speak to the Trust Company. They only give me three. A mouse
could not live in New York on that."
"The time is not distant," said Orr, "when the population of New York
will be exclusively composed of mice and millionaires. Nobody but
plutocrats and paupers will be able to live here. Already it is little
more than a sordid hell with a blue sky. I can remember----"
Orr ran on. He had the table. In the impromptu which ensued other
conversation was swamped. But during it, for a second, Loftus had
Fanny's hand in his. It clasped it and in clasping thrilled. It was
the first time in her life that she had permitted herself--or
him--such a thing. It was the last.
Sylvia, happening at the moment to turn that way, could not help
seeing what was going on. She colored and looked at Annandale.
During Orr's impromptu he had been attempting with plentiful champagne
to fill the hole of which he had complained.
Later, the dinner at an end, the women gone, the hole still unfilled,
he called for whisky and soda and monologued plaintively on the
disasters of the day. As he talked he drank. But the monologue, which
was becoming tedious, Harris interrupted. Mrs. Waldron had sent in to
say that she and Miss Waldron were going, and would Mr. Orr be so good
as to see them home.
At this Annandale got up. With the others he made for the room beyond.
There, shortly, the guests of the evening departed; husband and wife
were alone.
"Do you know, Fanny, how much I have lost today?" that husband began.
"No, Arthur," that wife replied. "Nor do I know that I particularly
care. There is something more important to me than money just now. I
want a divorce."
"Eh?" Annandale had been walking up and down the room, but at this he
stopped short. He did not seem to have heard aright. "Eh?"
"Eh?" Fanny repeated in open mimic. "Yes, I want a divorce."
"A divorce?" Munching the syllables of the word, Annandale put a hand
to his shirt front. "From me?" Had Fanny asked him to make good the
fifty million loss to the country which Orr had mentioned his
bewilderment could not have been more sheer.
He stared at Fanny. She was nodding at him. Influenced by that motion
of her head, slowly, almost laboriously, he sat down. There the
disasters of the day fusing with the alcohol of the night blent with
the demand and bewildered him still more.
"What an odd thing to want," he said at last. Then rallying he added,
"You must be j-joking. Yes--really, for you know you can't tell me
why."
To this, Fanny who had been eyeing him narrowly, retorted severely: "I
wonder are you in a condition to have me tell you anything at all?"
At the imputation the poor chap, after the fashion of poor chaps in
similar shape, flared indignantly. "There is nothing the matter with
me," he protested. Though very much mixed, he managed for the moment
not to appear so. "Nothing," he reiterated.
"Then Arthur, to be quite frank, we are not suited to each other. If
you will give me a divorce it will be nice of you. If not I shall go
to Dakota and get one."
Annandale passed a hand over his forehead. He did not in the least
understand what all this was about. Then suddenly the fumes of wine
disclosed a retrospect of incidents garnered unconsciously, memories
of Fanny and Loftus, the sense of her increasing aloofness, the
knowledge of his constant presence. These things made pictures which
he saw and, seeing, inflamed. At once, in answer not to her but to
them, he got from his seat, pounded violently on an etagere and cried
with the viciousness of drink: "I'll shoot him! I'll shoot Royal
Loftus for the dog that he is!"
"Beg pardon, sir." Through the lateral entrance to the drawing-room
Harris emerged, a tray in his hand. "A necklace, sir. It was under the
dining-room table where Miss Waldron sat, sir."
Annandale strangled an oath. He glared at Fanny, glared at the man,
glared at the pearls, took the latter, thrust them in his pocket,
motioned to Harris, strode from the room, went upstairs, then down and
out from the house, slamming the door after him with a noise in which
there was the clatter of musketry and the din of oaths.
The night was black yet full of stars, the hour homicidal and serene.
Annandale strode on. Before him was the park, about it a fence of high
iron and within phantasmal peace. He did not notice it. He was
wondering angrily what he would do, how he should act.
Had he been sober he would have known at once. When in his sphere of
life a woman wants to go, it is a man's mere duty to open the doors,
open the windows, run ahead, get a divorce and bring it back to her on
a salver. Had he been sober he would have realized that. He would have
recognized too the propriety of Fanny's frank request. After little
more than five months of marriage it was perhaps precipitate. Yet
considered simply as a request it was, in the world in which he moved,
more common than the reverse.
Ordinarily he would have realized that. What is more, he would have
realized that what Fanny had said was true. They were not suited for
each other. When people are not so suited it is best that they should
separate. But people that have bowed when they met might just as well
bow when they part. In the life known as polite big words and little
threats have long since gone out of fashion.
All of which ordinarily Annandale would have known. He was essentially
urbane, of a nature far more inclined to inaction than anger.
Ordinarily, he would have accepted the situation, without joy, no
doubt, but certainly without raising the roof. Whereupon, having so
accepted it, he would have turned in and gone to bed.
But alcohol plays strange tricks. It affects manners and memories. It
affects, too, the imagination. Annandale was drunk. The Yellow Fay
that lurks in liquor awoke in him the manger dog. He told himself that
he was being robbed. And of what? The wife of his bosom! And by whom?
His nearest friend! The outrage and the villainy of that loomed, or
rather, the Yellow Fay aiding, seemed to loom so monstrously, that,
beside it, the disasters of the Street dwindled into nothing, lost in
the sense of this wrong.
It was damnable, he decided.
Putting a hand in a pocket his fingers encountered a string of pearls.
It was not that which he was seeking. Besides, he had forgotten them.
But finding them there it occurred to him that he ought to restore
them at once. Circling the park he entered Irving Place and rang at
Sylvia's door.
There, instead of the usual if brief delay, the door opened at once.
Orr was coming out. Beyond in the hall Sylvia stood. Orr looked at
Annandale, wondering what the dickens he was after. But Annandale
brushed by. Orr passed on. Annandale entered the hall.
As the door closed the light revealed to Sylvia what Orr in the
semi-obscurity of the stoop had not observed and which, had he
observed, would, in view of an anterior episode, have induced his
return.
But Sylvia saw. In face and manner his excitement was obvious. Mindful
of that episode she feared that he was again in his cups. Yet
immediately, though for a moment, a question which he asked reassured
her. She understood, or thought she did, why he had come.
"Did you know that you had lost your pearls?"
Instinctively the girl's hand went to her throat.
"Here they are. They were found somewhere. In the hall, I think."
"Thank you, Arthur. This is very good of you. But tomorrow would have
done."
She did not ask him in and this omission he did not appear to notice.
He looked about the hall and then at the girl. At the look her fear
returned.
"Did you know about Fanny and Loftus?" he suddenly asked. "They're
going to elope." As he spoke he leaned back heavily against the door.
"I shall kill him," he added thickly.
Sylvia wrung her hands. "Oh, Arthur, you have been drinking again. You
promised that you never would."
"I shall kill him," Annandale stubbornly repeated.
"Oh, don't say such things," the girl pleaded. "Don't say them. Go
home."
Annandale turned sullenly, opened the door and looking back, muttered,
"I have no home."
Closing the door after him he started down the steps. They were few
and wide, easy of descent. But they had become unaccountably steep. He
caught at a rail. It steadied him. He stood there a moment. Then, a
bit uncertainly, he zigzagged on.