The thing to do, it was finally decided among several of those on
our paper and several on other papers who had known him more or less
intimately, was to go to Steele himself, and ask him, not for publicity
but just between ourselves, what was to be done, what he proposed to
do, whether there was anything now that the local newspapers could say
or do which would help him in any way? Did he want to be restored to a
staff position? Was he going to stick to his wife? What, if anything,
and with no malicious intent, should they say about Mrs. Davis? In a
more or less secret and brotherly or professional spirit they were
going to put it up to him and then leave it there, doing whatever they
could in accordance with what he might wish.
Accordingly, two of the local newsmen whom he quite honestly respected
visited him and placed the above several propositions before him. They
found him, as I was told afterwards, seated upon the front porch of the
very small and commonplace house in which after the dismissal of the
charge against Mrs. Davis, he and his wife had been dwelling, reading a
paper. Seated with him was Mrs. Steele, thinner and more querulous and
anemic and unattractive than before. And upon the lot outside was their
little son. Upon their arrival, they hailed Steele for a private word,
and Mrs. Steele arose and went into the house. She looked, said one of
these men, as though she expected more trouble. Steele, on his part,
was all smiles and genial tenderings of hospitality. He was hoping for
the best, of course, and he was anxious to do away with any new source
of trouble. He even rubbed his hands, and licked his lips. “Come right
in, boys. Come on up on the porch. Wait a minute and I’ll bring out a
couple of chairs.” He hastened away but quickly returned, determined,
as they thought, to make as good an impression as possible.
After he had heard what they had come for—most tactfully and artfully
put, of course—he was all smiles, eager, apparently, to be well thought
of once more. To their inquiry as to whether he proposed to remain or
not, he replied: “Yes, for the present.” He had not much choice. He
had not saved enough money in recent days to permit him to do much of
anything else, and his wife’s illness and other things had used up
about all he had. “And now, just between ourselves, Steele,” asked one
of the two men who knew him better than the other, “what about Mrs.
Davis and your wife? Just where do you stand in regard to them? Are
you going to stick to your wife or are you going with the other woman
eventually? No trouble for you, you understand—no more publicity.
But the fellows on the papers are in a little bit of a quandary in
regard to this. They don’t intend to publish anything more—nothing
disparaging. They only want to get your slant on the thing so that if
anything more does come up in connection with this they can fix it so
that it won’t be offensive to you, you see.”
“Yes, I see,” replied Steele cheerfully and without much reflection.
“But so far as that Davis woman is concerned, though, you can forget
her. I’m through with her. She was never much to me, anyhow, just a
common——.” Here he used the good old English word for prostitute. As
for his wife, he was going to stick by her, of course. She was a good
woman. She loved him. There was his little boy. He was through with all
that varietistic stuff. There was nothing to it. A man couldn’t get
away with it—and so on.
The two men, according to their account of it afterward, winced not a
little, for, as they said, they had thought from all that had gone
before that there had surely been much more than common prostitution
between Steele and the woman. How could all this have been in the face
of Mrs. Steele’s great jealousy, Mrs. Davis’ passionate declaration
about pure, spiritual and undying love? Imagine it! After a few more
words the men left, convinced that whether interested in his wife
or not or Mrs. Davis or not, Steele was literally terrorized by
convention,—and to the point where he was floundering about for an
excuse. He was weak and he wanted to put the best face on the situation
that he could. As one of the newspapermen afterward expressed it,
“there was something unpleasant about it all.” Just why had he changed
so quickly? Why the gratuitous insult to Mrs. Davis? Why, after the
previous acknowledgment of an affection of sorts at least for her, was
he now willing to write himself down a bounder and a cad in this open
and offensive way? For a cad he plainly was. Mrs. Davis could not be as
shabby as he had made her out. This was at once and generally agreed
upon. That finally fixed Steele’s position in G—— as a bounder. He was
never again taken back on any local staff.
And for myself, I could not quite fathom it. The thing haunted me.
What was it that moved him—public opinion, fear of the loss of the
petty social approval which had once been his, sorrow for his wife—what
one special thing that Mrs. Davis might or might not have done? For
certainly, as things turned out, she had been guilty of nothing except
loving him—illegally, of course, but loving him. My mind involuntarily
flashed back to the two curled abaft the pilot-house in the moonlight,
those quaint, shadowy, romantic figures. And now this! And then there
was dancing and laughter and love.