Autumn came, and the paw of the tiger that destiny is, reached out. It was
a paw of velvet, however. I was called to the telephone one afternoon to
speak to my violin teacher. Such a call was not unexpected. It had all been
arranged beforehand, and it was Mr. Saltus saying "Hello!" None of the
family had seen my violin teacher or heard his voice. All they knew was
that I practiced many hours a day. The arrangement worked to perfection. If
I went off for my lessons a little earlier than necessary, it was
unnoticed. The bicycle was useful also, being considered a healthful and
needed exercise. I was encouraged to ride every afternoon, and Mr. Saltus
and I would meet on the Riverside for a chat.
Barring his little daughter, Elsie, of whom Mr. Saltus was exceedingly
fond, he made no mention of his family life, nor did I. This was in
pre-flapper days. The world was very old-fashioned. Bachelor girls and the
rights of the individual were not talked about, or even thought of. Strange
as it may seem in this emancipated era, any friendship between a married
man and a young girl was looked upon not only as disgraceful, but
impossible.
We talked it over. Realizing that while he remained under the roof with his
wife, he owed her more than he could ever pay, realizing too that any
indiscretion of mine must react upon a greatly beloved father, I closed the
episode--or thought I had.
Within a few days after this Mrs. Francis Henry Saltus, Mr. Saltus' mother,
called and invited me to tea at her home. There, at least, one would be
free from censure. Other invitations followed and were accepted.
If there was a being on earth whom Mr. Saltus truly loved it was his
mother. His deference to her and his solicitude for her were beautiful. It
would have been tragic otherwise, considering how her entire life had been
devoted to him. He was her little boy even then,--naughty, perhaps, but her
idol. As a matter of fact his mother understood him as little as others
did. Love, however, is somewhat psychic. She never took his atheism
seriously. Many a time she would interrupt some of his remarks to say:--
"This is not the real Edgar. It may take time, but he will come out of it
all at the last."
Mr. Saltus often referred to this when, as she predicted, he did "come out
of it."
So frequently was I a guest in his mother's drawing-room that it was
difficult for my family to debar Mr. Saltus from our home. His interest in
my father's library being accepted as evidence of his fitness, he was
permitted to call. Better, they thought, for me to receive him under their
roof than meet in secret, where unpleasant construction might be put upon
it.
Like the proverbial camel, his nose once safely in the tent of the enemy,
the rest followed. He was accepted as a friend of the family.
No one could enjoy a joke more readily than Mr. Saltus' mother.
Quick-witted, clever at repartee, she was delighted when any one had the
temerity to brave her son and give him back tit for tat. While I was having
tea with them one afternoon Mr. Saltus outlined what he thought should be
my study for the next few months, ending with the remark that a slip of a
girl did not know what was good for her.
Unhesitatingly came the reply--"A slip will not be instructed by a snip."
Mr. Saltus was slightly undersized for a man. The remark rather hurt him,
but his mother burst into a laugh. From that day until his death he was
Snipps or Snippsy to me always. So fond did he become of the name that he
used it almost entirely when writing or speaking of himself. Upon
occasions, when annoyed at something he did I used the name of Edgar, he
was hurt and indignant and could not be himself again until the other name
was restored. Adopting from me a child language I always used with my pets
he would say:--
"I be a good Snipps! (imitating a dog begging); I'm old dog Tray--ever
faithful."
"Associating with a child has put you back where you belong," his mother
once said to him. "You are nothing but a bad little boy, grown up."
Strangely enough, it was not so much a romantic attachment as fundamental
qualities in common, that made possible the bond between a young girl and a
middle-aged man. In meeting a temperament like his own, but in exaggerated
form, it meant not only a common language, but an uncommon thing on his
part,--that of revealing to himself his high-strung nervous excitability
and absent-mindedness in the mirror of those qualities in another. In
attempting to soothe the nerves of another, he forgot his own. In
remembering to pick up handkerchiefs, gloves and purses, dropped under
chairs and tables and forgotten, he gradually began to look after and take
care of another even more helpless in that respect than himself.
With a girl, never popular at school, because of her desire for silence
and solitude, having more interest in reading than in games, he felt
himself to be absolutely at home. As I was looked upon as abnormal and
unnatural even by my family, the understanding and sympathy of such a
brilliant man, with a wealth of information on every subject under heaven
at his finger-tips, turned him into my Alma Mater.
About this time an incident occurred which was not only characteristic of
Mr. Saltus' weakest side, but so far-reaching in its effects that no
biography would be complete without it.
Admiring letters from women were his daily diet. As a rule he ignored them.
At one time I started to make a scrap-book of them for him, calling it The
Dollymops Daily. When a week or so would go by without bringing in a fresh
batch of them, Mr. Saltus was told that his stock was going down and that
he should have a care to his moustache.
Among these letters was one from England, from a Dorothy S----. With it was
the photograph of a high-bred and pretty girl. Her letter was different
from the average one. Mr. Saltus answered it, and a correspondence began
between them. Knowing of him only through his stories and articles in the
newspapers, in ignorance that he was not only a married man but a father as
well, she assumed that he was neither, and she wrote him to the effect that
she was sure he was her affinity, and all the rest of it.
That was the time to have eased off, but Mr. Saltus did not. Her letters
interested him. She was too far away to cause him inconvenience, for the
moment at least, and material for stories might result.
Answering again he brushed aside the possibility of future unpleasantness,
and sent her an inexpensive ring. The girl took this very seriously.
Replying to his vague compliments, she formally accepted him and sent him a
ring in return, which he brought up to me as a joke.
Vainly was he blackjacked and scarified by me in her behalf. The affair
amused him. Having let her assume that he was an unmarried man, he would
not face the momentary unpleasantness of writing her the truth and putting
the matter straight, at the price of a little humiliation.
Horrified, however, at the way she had taken it, and fearing possible
results, he wrote to her saying that he was en route to South America on an
assignment for a newspaper, and hoped it would end there. Far from it.
After several unanswered letters, the girl's mother, having ascertained in
some way that he was still in New York, sent him a note by registered mail
telling him that her daughter, always delicate, had gone utterly to pieces
over his silence, and asking the reason of it.
The more involved it became the less inclined was Mr. Saltus to face it,
confess the truth and admit that he had replied for amusement only. No
amount of hammering at him could make him realize that he was playing with
the affections of a human being who might suffer in consequence. It had
been only a diversion to him. He could not see why it should not be the
same to her. Weeks passed. Another letter from the mother saying that the
girl had gone into rapid tuberculosis and was in the south of France, again
urged him to write her. This last appeal sent Mr. Saltus almost into a fit.
"For God's sake tell the truth and have it over with," he was urged again
and again. It seemed to be beyond him. What he had begun only as an
amusement, without a thought of harm, had developed into a monster waiting
to devour him.
When he finally answered the letter it was to say that he was in the
bankruptcy court, utterly penniless, and, in the circumstances, thought it
best to drop out of her life.
"Now," he said, "they will not think me worth following up."
After that the letters ceased and he heard nothing more, and it was several
years before the denouement occurred.
On the heels of this episode came a crushing grief. Mrs. Francis Henry
Saltus, Mr. Saltus' mother, died, very suddenly. The shock stunned him. It
took him into a realm hitherto unknown--even unthought of, and it was long
before he could readjust himself to life.
Even in his grief his strong strain of indifference to values, custom or
common-sense kept to the fore. From the pot-pourri of his deep love for his
mother, lack of attachment to material things, united with oriental
atavism--he insisted that the body of his mother be buried with all her
large and valuable jewels upon it, as the Egyptians surrounded the Ka with
all the trappings and trifles of life.
There is no danger in giving out this fact. The exact spot where Mrs.
Saltus is buried (unmarked by a stone, for Mr. Saltus did not believe in
such things) is known only to myself and to the cemetery authorities. It is
some little distance from the cemetery in which the ashes of her son now
rest. Unfortunate it is, that one he loved so deeply could not have been
buried in the same plot.
From the shock of this death Mr. Saltus' health went to pieces, and the
following spring saw him off to Europe. I was abroad also that year, but in
another part of the continent, and it was months before we met again.
On this trip, however, Mr. Saltus made one of the few acquaintances
destined to last until the end of his life. Among those at the Captain's
table, and seated next to him, was a Miss G----. Young, beautiful, and
belonging to one of the best families from whom Ambassadors had been
chosen, nimble of tongue and optimistic of spirit, she did much to drag him
from the extreme depression into which he had been submerged by his
mother's passing.
Spiritual, unselfish, always thinking and doing for others, she represented
a type of woman never encountered by him before. She saw the best in him
and ignored the worst. To penetrate the depths of his depression, finding
an agnostic hard soil to saturate, she finally persuaded him to go and
consult a medium. With the open mind which Mr. Saltus always had, he agreed
to do so, and, upon his return to New York in the autumn, he sought out
and went to a Margaret Stewart, a woman celebrated in her day as a
remarkable psychic.
What she told him was rather upsetting to the firm philosophy of his life.
It suggested possibilities. Not only did he receive a curiously
characteristic message, purporting to come from his mother, but certain
things concerning his home life and his future were predicted. These
predictions included myself, and were to the effect that Mr. Saltus would
ultimately be enabled to marry me and have his happiest years late in life.
He lost no time in rushing up to my home with this news.
Assuming at first to "pooh-pooh" spiritualism as moonshine, his interest
nevertheless increased. On the lookout for frauds, yet hoping as well to
get something concrete to tie to, he went from medium to medium and from
seance to seance. Critical, curious and cautious, unwilling to accept the
phenomena presented, he was yet more unwilling to give up the quest.
After months of experimenting along these lines, his decision, based on
what he had both seen and heard, was that though the major part of it was
fraudulent,--and the identity of the entity giving the message open to
question,--there was proof, to his mind at least, of the persistence of
personality after death. That granted, a larger question presented itself.
Accepting life to be continuous, the bee did not cease to hum as he had so
long affirmed. On the contrary,--the belief in reincarnation became almost
a necessity. The pros and cons of this subject with all its ramifications
were thrashed out. Mr. Saltus hated arguments. He would agree with any one
on any subject rather than expend the energy to controvert them. On this
subject, however, he reversed himself.
Reminding him of what he had told me about Rome, we talked it over from
every angle. It intrigued his imagination more than any subject on earth.
It was at this time that Mrs. Saltus and himself, having lived separate
lives under one roof to little purpose, disagreed further. Mr. Saltus
wanted her to divorce him. Thinking perhaps that she had suffered
sufficiently at his hands and having had enough of matrimony, she had no
desire for the divorce or for further experiments. Besides, there was the
little girl--Elsie.
Loving her devotedly, although children in general bored and annoyed him
beyond expression, Mr. Saltus used to quote her childish prattle with
pride. A pussie cat became a 'puff-tat' because of her, and it was her tiny
hands which until then had held them together.
An incident aggravating the estrangement caused Mrs. Saltus to take the
little girl, and leave the apartment. Incidentally, she left his life
forever. Nothing can be said to put Mr. Saltus in the right in this affair.
That wrong was not deliberate, however. He would not have harmed a hair of
her head on purpose. It was the result of the one weak link in his
character. As a matter of fact Mrs. Saltus had been too indulgent and
forgiving. These qualities, charming in themselves, gave a temperament
such as his, an exaggerated latitude to develop the domineering and
irritable nature inherent in him.
The wonder is not that Mrs. Saltus left him. It is that she remained so
long. They never lived under the same roof again. Deciding that the moment
had come to press his desire for divorce, Mr. Saltus followed,--found her
and asked for it. His wife saw in it nothing desirable for her, and
refused. Possibly she did not need a new hat, or had not heard of the
Denver woman's method of getting it. She had agreed to his many wishes for
the last time.
Moving from the Florence, Mr. Saltus took what remained of the old Italian
olive-wood furniture, belonging to his early home in Seventeenth Street,
and his books, and took an apartment in the Park Madison, around the corner
from the Manhattan Club. This club had been a semi-home to him for
years,--a general headquarters both to write in and to receive letters, and
it offered quiet and good food as well.
Moving on short notice, his belongings were tossed into the apartment any
which way, to be put into order later,--a later which never arrived. With a
few books in book-cases and more piled in various corners of the
living-room, the latter semi-covered by draperies which were never put to
use again, and various pieces of clothing he did not need on top of this,
he started in to create a new atmosphere in which to work.
The apartment was small and his furniture was massive. The vital essential
was there however, for it faced the south and he had the sun all day.
Permitting the maids only to make up his bed,--forbidding them under the
most direful threats to attempt any cleaning or dusting of the place, lest
some valuable paper or manuscript be lost or mislaid, he managed 'By the
grace of God,' as he himself expressed it, to get on somehow.
Though only a step away from the Manhattan Club, few knew where he lived.
In later years, with the same desire to conceal his residence, lest some
one invade his privacy, he gave the Park Madison, 25 Madison Avenue, as his
address. The building had been torn down then, so he was safe in giving it,
and no one but those he chose to tell had the faintest idea where he lived.
Door-men and bell boys of the Park Madison were bribed and threatened as
before, never to let any one into his apartment or even to admit that he
lived there. No hermit could have enjoyed better seclusion.