voice, "I ask your absolute silence. Middleton, whom you all know is
one of the editorial staff of the _Sphere_, has just come in. He can
stay only a few minutes. He came especially to tell you something."
A man standing behind the toastmaster stepped into the toastmaster's
place. He was in business clothes, a sharp contrast to the rest of
the diners. He was loudly applauded. He raised his right hand and
shook his head.
"Boys," he said, "I've got a tragic piece of news for you--for those
of you who were in college any time up to ten years ago." He paused
and looked the diners over.
"Four fifths of you men who are here to-night knew old Hoddy Irving,
our 'prof' in Latin. He served old Huntington College for forty years,
the longest term any professor ever served. He made no demands--ever.
He took us freshmen under his wing. I used to walk now and then with
him, miles around the college, when it wasn't so built up as it now
is. He loved the fields and the animals and the trees. He taught me
a lot of things besides Latin. Don't you remember the funny little
walk he had, sort of a hop forward? Don't you remember the way he'd
come up to the college dormitories nights, sometimes, from his house
down on the Row, and knock timidly at our doors, and come in and
visit? Don't you remember that we used to clear some of those tables
mighty quickly, of the chips and the bottles?"
There were titters, and some one shouted: "You said it!"
"And then, don't you remember, that some ten years ago they turned
the old man off, with a pension--so-called--of half his salary. But
what was his salary? Two thousand dollars--two thousand dollars at
the end of forty years!! You and I, and old Huntington College,
turned old Hoddy out to pasture, this pasture, on a thousand a year!
And to-night, right now, he's lying in Bellevue, both legs broken,
skull fractured, and not a damn cent in the world except insurance
enough to bury him. And to-morrow he'll be ours to bury, boys--old
Hoddy Irving!"
A confusion of voices rose in the room, and over them all a
"No!" from some one who seemed to cry out in pain.
"Yes!" said Middleton as the murmurs ceased. "Our old Hoddy, starving,
loaded up with debt, alone, down in a miserable hall bedroom in
Stuyvesant Square. How did I come to know about it? One of our
reporters, who covers Bellevue, dug up the story in his day's work.
They brought in this old, disheveled, unconscious man--and in his
pocket was his name. Kenyon, the reporter, went over to the house on
the Square and found there another old fellow that old Hoddy chummed
some with, and who knew all the circumstances.
"It seems Hoddy had an invalid old sister--and they hadn't any money
except this pension. How the two old souls got along no one will
never know. But she died awhile ago, and that put Hoddy into a lot
more debt. And this miserable little eighty dollars a month has had
to carry him and his debts. And not a whimper that old man utters.
Always kindly, Hoddy was, always telling stories from the forty years
at Huntington--and we fellows here, a lot of us rotten with money,
and not knowing that the old fellow---"
Middleton's voice broke. It was some time before he proceeded.
"This afternoon, at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street,
just as that tornado broke, he tried to cross the street. He got in
a jam of cars, and of course the windshields were all mussed up with
rain, and the chauffeurs couldn't see anything ahead--and they don't
know whose car it was. The police say it was just four thirty-one
when they picked him up.
"Well, that's all, except that--I'm going down to Bellevue, and if
one or two of you want to come--perhaps old Hoddy will know us--even
this late."
Middleton had finished. From various parts of the room came the words:
"I'll go! Let me go!" Men were frankly wiping their eyes.
At a distant table arose Martin Delano. He was reputed to be the
wealthiest alumnus of Huntington. He was said to have made almost
fabulous millions during the war. In the Street he was known as
"Merciless Martin." They were planning to strike him this evening
for at least a hundred thousand.
Martin Delano stood holding the edge of the table with one hand, the
other fingering a spoon on the table. He stood there long. Several
times he opened his lips as though to speak. He took out his
handkerchief and wiped his cheeks and forehead. Evidently he was
deeply moved.
"Mr. Toastmaster, may I ask the privilege of going down to Bellevue
with Mr. Middleton? I would ask that I be allowed to insist on going
down. I have sinned, grievously sinned, in forgetting old Hoddy. Now,
when it's too late----Thirty years ago, and more, when I was a green,
frightened freshman from Vermont, he took me to his heart. He was
known as the Freshman's Friend. That's what Hoddy always did--take
the green and frightened freshman to his heart. Probably, if he
hadn't done that to me, I'd have gone back home in my lonesomeness.
And then----
"Yes, I have sinned--and it might have been so different. I want to
go down there! And I'm coming back here, before you men are through
to-night, and I'll tell you more."
At about half-past ten Martin Delano came back. He walked into the
room just as one of the speakers had finished. The toastmaster
caught his eye and beckoned to him to come to the speaker's table.
Delano stood in front of the crowd. He had walked forward, seeing no
one on his way.
"Hoddy--Hoddy has gone, boys!"
Then quickly, silently, the three hundred men arose and stood. After
a time they heard Delano say: "Sit down, boys."
He waited till they were seated. "There's a lot that I might tell,
men--terrible things--that I won't tell, for it's all over. Just
this--and I suppose you're about through now and breaking up. It was
the poor old Prof. of ours--shattered, deathly white, a lot older.
But will you believe it, the same dear old smile, or almost a smile,
on his face! Unconscious, but babbling. And about what? The
college--Alma Mater! Those were just the words--Alma Mater! The
college that gave him the half pay and forgot him on the very night
when we are trying to raise a miserable two million, that things like
this sha'n't happen again!"
"And boys, when we bent over him and whispered our names, he seemed
after a while to understand that we were there--but in the classroom,
the old Number 3 in Holmes Hall! And fellows, he called on--on me to
recite----"
Merciless Martin Delano couldn't go on. Finally he spoke.
"And so, Mr. President, I wish, sir, as a slight token of my
appreciation of what that simple great man has done for Huntington
College to give to our Alma Mater--our Alma Mater, sir--the sum of
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be used for the erection
of a suitable building, for whatever purpose is most necessary, and
that building to be called after Horace Irving.
"And sir, I also desire to give to the fund for properly providing
for the salaries of our professors and other teachers, the sum of
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars--those men who teach in our
Alma Mater.
"And I ask one word more: I have arranged that Professor Irving is
to be buried from my house. If you will permit me, I will leave now."
The alumni of Huntington College were silent. There was no sound,
save the occasional pushing of a chair, or the click of a plate or a
glass upon the table, as Martin Delano passed from the room.
It was after one o'clock. Martin Delano was in his library, his arms
flung across the table, his face between them.
In the opaque blur of swirling rain, his car had passed the corner
of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street at precisely half-past four that
afternoon. He had happened to take out his watch at the moment the
Metropolitan clock struck the second quarter.
He would never know whether it had been his car or another!
SLOW POISON
BY ALICE DUER MILLER
From _The Saturday Evening Post_
The Chelmsford divorce had been accomplished with the utmost decorum,
not only outwardly in the newspapers, but inwardly among a group of
intimate friends. They were a homogeneous couple--were liked by the
same people, enjoyed the same things, and held many friends in common.
These were able to say with some approach to certainty that everyone
had behaved splendidly, even the infant of twenty-three with whom
Julian had fallen in love.
Of course there will always be the question--and we used to argue it
often in those days--how well a man can behave who, after fifteen
perfectly satisfactory years of married life, admits that he has
fallen in love with another woman. But if you believe in the
clap-of-thunder theory, as I do, why, then, for a man nearing forty,
taken off his feet by a blond-headed girl, Julian, too, behaved
admirably.
As for Mrs. Julian, there was never any doubt as to her conduct. I
used to think her--and I was not alone in the opinion--the most
perfect combination of gentleness and power, and charity and humour,
that I had ever seen. She was a year or so older than Julian--though
she did not look it--and a good deal wiser, especially in the ways
of the world; and, oddly enough, one of the features that worried us
most in the whole situation was how he was ever going to get on, in
the worldly sense, without her. He was to suffer not only from the
loss of her counsel but from the lack of her indorsement. There are
certain women who are a form of insurance to a man; and Anne gave a
poise and solidity to Julian's presentation of himself which his own
flibbertigibbet manner made particularly necessary.
I think this view of the matter disturbed Anne herself, though she
was too clever to say so; or perhaps too numbed by the utter wreck
of her own life to see as clearly as usual the rocks ahead of Julian.
It was she, I believe, who first mentioned, who first thought of
divorce, and certainly she who arranged the details. Julian, still
in the more ideal stage of his emotion, had hardly wakened to the
fact that his new love was marriageable. But Mrs. Julian, with the
practical eye of her sex, saw in a flash all it might mean to him,
at his age, to begin life again with a young beauty who adored him.
She saw this, at least, as soon as she saw anything; for Julian,
like most of us when the occasion rises, developed a very pretty
power of concealment. He had for a month been seeing Miss Littell
every day before any of us knew that he went to see her at all.
Certainly Anne, unsuspicious by nature, was unprepared for the
revelation.
It took place in the utterly futile, unnecessary way such
revelations always do take place. The two poor innocent dears had
allowed themselves a single indiscretion; they had gone out together,
a few days before Christmas, to buy some small gifts for each other.
They had had an adventure with a beggar, an old man wise enough to
take advantage of the holiday season, and the no less obvious
holiday in the hearts of this pair. He had forced them to listen to
some quaint variant of the old story, and they had between them
given him all the small change they had left--sixty-seven cents, I
think it was.
That evening at dinner Julian, ever so slightly afraid of the long
pause, had told Anne the story as if it had happened to him alone. A
few days afterward the girl, whom she happened to meet somewhere or
other, displaying perhaps a similar nervousness, told the same story.
Even the number of cents agreed.
I spoke a moment ago of the extraordinary power of concealment which
we all possess; but I should have said the negative power to avoid
exciting suspicion. Before that moment, before the finger points at
us, the fool can deceive the sage; and afterward not even the sage
can deceive the veriest fool.
Julian had no desire to lie to his wife. Indeed, he told me he had
felt from the first that she would be his fittest confidante. He
immediately told her everything--a dream rather than a narrative.
Nowhere did Anne show her magnanimity more than in accepting the
rather extravagant financial arrangements which Julian insisted on
making for her. He was not a rich man, and she the better economist
of the two. We knew she saw that in popular esteem Julian would pay
the price of her pride if she refused, and that in this ticklish
moment of his life the least she could do was to let him have the
full credit for his generosity.
"And after all," as she said to me, "young love can afford to go
without a good many things necessary to old age."
It was the nearest I heard her come to a complaint.
As soon as everything was settled she sailed for Florence, where she
had friends and where, she intimated, she meant to spend most of her
time.
I said good-by to her with real emotion, and the phrase I used as to
my wish to serve her was anything but a convention.
Nor did she take it so.
"Help Julian through this next year," she said. "People will take it
harder than he knows. He'll need you all." And she was kind enough
to add something about my tact. Poor lady! She must have mentally
withdrawn her little compliment before we met many times again.
II
Perhaps the only fault in Anne's education of her husband had been
her inability to cling. In his new menage this error was rectified,
and the effect on him was conspicuously good; in fact, I think Rose's
confidence in his greatness pulled them through the difficult time.
For there was no denying that it was difficult. Many people looked
coldly on them, and I know there was even some talk of asking him to
resign from the firm of architects of which he was a member. The
other men were all older, and very conservative. Julian represented
to them everything that was modern and dangerous. Granger, the
leading spirit, was in the habit of describing himself as holding
old-fashioned views, by which he meant that he had all the virtues
of the Pilgrim Fathers and none of their defects. I never liked him,
but I could not help respecting him. The worst you could say of him
was that his high standards were always successful.
You felt that so fanatical a sense of duty ought to have required
some sacrifices.
To such a man Julian's conduct appeared not only immoral but
inadvisable, and unfitting in a young man, especially without
consulting his senior partners.
We used to say among ourselves that Granger's reason for wanting to
get rid of Julian was not any real affection for the dim old moral
code, but rather his acute realization that without Anne his junior
partner was a less valuable asset.
Things were still hanging fire when I paid her the first of my
annual visits. She was dreadfully distressed at my account of the
situation. She had the manner one sometimes sees in dismissed nurses
who meet their former little charges unwashed or uncared for. She
could hardly believe it was no longer her business to put the whole
matter right.
"Can't she do something for him?" she said. "Make her bring him a
great building. That would save him."
It was this message that I carried home to Rose; at least I suggested
the idea to her as if it were my own. I had my doubts of her being
able to carry it out.
Out of loyalty to Julian, or perhaps I ought to say out of loyalty to
Anne, we had all accepted Rose, but we should soon have loved her in
any case. She was extraordinarily sweet and docile, and gave us,
those at least who were not parents, our first window to the east,
our first link with the next generation, just at the moment when we
were relinquishing the title ourselves. I am afraid that some of the
males among us envied Julian more than perhaps in the old days we
had ever envied him Anne.
But we hardly expected her to further his career as Anne had done,
and yet, oddly enough, that was exactly what she did. Her methods
had all the effectiveness of youth and complete conviction. She
forced Julian on her friends and relations, not so much on his
account as on theirs. She wanted them to be sure of the best. The
result was that orders flowed in. Things took a turn for the better
and continued to improve, as I was able to report to Anne when I
went to see her at Florence or at Paris. She was always well lodged,
well served, and surrounded by the pleasantest people, yet each time
I saw her she had a look exiled and circumscribed, a look I can only
describe as that of a spirit in reduced circumstances.
She was always avid for details of Julian and all that concerned him,
and as times improved I was stupid enough to suppose I pleased her by
giving them from the most favourable angle. It seemed to me quite
obvious, as I saw how utterly she had ruined her own life, that she
ought at least to have the comfort of knowing that she had not
sacrificed it in vain. And so I allowed myself, not an exaggeration
but a candour more unrestrained than would be usual in the
circumstances.
Led on by her burning interest I told her many things I might much
better have kept to myself; not only accounts of his work and his
household and any new friends in our old circle, but we had all been
amazed to see a sense of responsibility develop in Julian in answer
to his new wife's dependence on him. With this had come a certain
thoughtfulness in small attentions, which, I saw too late, Anne must
always have missed in him. She was so much more competent in the
smaller achievements of life than he that it had been wisdom to leave
them to her; and Anne had often traveled alone and attended to the
luggage, when now Rose was personally conducted like a young empress.
The explanation was simple enough: Anne had the ability to do it,
and the other had not. Even if I had stopped to think, I might fairly
have supposed that Anne would find some flattery in the contrast. I
should have been wrong.
Almost the first thing she asked me was whether he came home to
luncheon. In old times, though his house was only a few blocks from
his office, he had always insisted that it took too much time. Anne
had never gained her point with him, though she put some force into
the effort. Now I had to confess he did.
"It's much better for him," she said with pleasure, and quite
deceived me; herself, too, perhaps.
Yet even I, for all my blindness, felt some uneasiness the year
Rose's son was born. I do not think the desire for offspring had
ever taken up a great deal of room in Julian's consciousness, but of
course Anne had wanted children, and I felt very cruel, sitting in
her little apartment in Paris, describing the baby who ought to have
been hers. How different her position would have been now if she had
some thin-legged little girl to educate or some raw-boned boy to
worry over; and there was that overblessed woman at home, necessary
not only to Julian but to Julian's son.
It was this same year, but at a later visit, that I first became
aware of a change in Anne. At first the charm of her surroundings,
her pretty clothes, even to the bright little buckles on her shoes,
blinded me to the fact that she herself was changed. I do not mean
that she was aged. One of the delightful things about her was that
she was obviously going to make an admirable old lady; the delicate
boniness of her face and the clearness of her skin assured that.
This was a change more fundamental. Even in her most distracted days
Anne had always maintained a certain steadiness of head. She had
trodden thorny paths, but she had always known where she was going.
I had seen her eyelids red, but I had never failed to find in the
eyes themselves the promise of a purpose. But now it was gone. I
felt as if I were looking into a little pool which had been troubled
by a stone, and I waiting vainly for the reflection to re-form itself.
So painful was the impression that before I sailed for home I tried
to convey to her the dangers of her mood.
"I think you are advising me to be happy," she said.
"I am advising no such thing," I answered. "I am merely pointing out
that you run the risk of being more unhappy than you are. My
visits--or rather the news I bring you--are too important to you.
You make me feel as if it were the only event of the year--to you
who have always had such an interesting life of your own."
"I have not had a life of my own since I was twenty," she returned.
It was at twenty she had married.
"Then think of Julian," I said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness
but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit.
"For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman,
one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now,
would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole
story, would find it hard to forgive him if you should fail to
continue to be the splendid triumphant creature whom we know you
were designed to be."
She gave me a long queer look, which meant something tremendous.
Evidently my words had made an impression.
They had, but not just the one I intended.
III
One of the first people I always saw on returning was Julian. How
often he thought of Anne I do not know, but he spoke of her with the
greatest effort. He invariably took care to assure himself that she
was physically well, but beyond this it would have been a brave
person who dared to go. He did not want to hear the details of her
life and appearance.
It was with some trepidation, therefore, that a few months after
this I came to tell him that Anne was about to return to America.
Why she was coming, or for how long, her letter did not say. I only
knew that the second Saturday in December would see her among us
again. It seemed fair to assume that her stay would not be long.
Julian evidently thought so for he arranged to be in the West for
three or four weeks.
I went to meet her. The day was cold and rainy, and as soon as I saw
her I made up my mind that the crossing had been a bad one, and I
was glad no one else had come to the wharf with me. She was standing
by the rail, wrapped in a voluminous fur coat--the fashions were
slim in the extreme--and her hat was tied on by a blue veil.
I may as well admit that from the moment I heard of her projected
return I feared that her real motive for coming, conscious or
unconscious, was to see Julian again. So when I told her of his
absence I was immensely relieved that she took it as a matter of
course.
"I suppose we might have met," she observed. "As it is, I can go
about without any fear of an awkward encounter." I say I was relieved,
but I was also excessively puzzled. Why had Anne come home?
It was a question I was to hear answered in a variety of ways during
the next few months, by many of Anne's friends and partisans; for,
as I think I have said, Anne had inspired great attachment since her
earliest days. Why had she come home? they exclaimed. Why not, pray?
Had she done anything criminal that she was to be exiled? Did I
think it pleasant to live abroad on a small income? Even if she
could get on without her friends, could they do without her?
The tone of these questions annoyed me not a little when I heard them,
which was not for some time. Soon after Anne's arrival I, too, was
called away, and it was not until February that I returned and was
met by the carefully set piece--Anne the Victim.
With that ill-advised self-confidence of which I have already made
mention, I at once set about demolishing this picture. I told Anne's
friends, who were also mine, that she would thank them very little
for their attitude. I found myself painting her life abroad as a
delirium of intellect and luxury. I even found myself betraying
professional secrets and arguing with total strangers as to the
amount of her income.
Even in Montreal faint echoes of this state of things had reached me,
but not until I went to see Anne on my return did I get any idea of
their cause. She had taken a furnished apartment from a friend, in a
dreary building in one of the West Forties. Only a jutting front of
limestone and an elevator man in uniform saved it, or so it seemed
to me, from being an old-fashioned boarding house. Its windows, small,
as if designed for an African sun, looked northward upon a darkened
street. Anne's apartment was on the second floor, and the
requirements of some caryatids on the outside rendered her
fenestration particularly meager. Her friend, if indeed it were a
friend, had not treated her generously in the matter of furniture.
She had left nothing superfluous but two green glass jugs on the
mantelpiece, and had covered the chairs with a chintz, the
groundwork of which was mustard colour.