He was in the middle of an intricate mental calculation which had to do with his wife’s approaching birthday.
Nell grew quite eloquent in her eulogy of Mason, ending with, “What do you think of that?”
“Eh? What?” said Jimmie.
“You weren’t listening at all!”
“Right,” Jimmie admitted, laughing. “I was thinking of — er — an important matter. What were you saying?”
“Nothing.”
“Come now! I was thinking of you.”
“It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand, anyway. All you know is your dirty old office.”
Jimmie whistled.
“What the deuce—” he began, but his wife promptly burst into tears, and he spent the next thirty minutes trying to comfort her.
Twice during the following week Jimmie returned home from his office at half past five to find his wife absent.
The first time she answered his question with a brief “At a matinée”; the second, she told at some length of having spent the afternoon at the Museum of Art with Mason. Jimmie looked nonplused for a moment.
He stood in the doorway leading to the kitchen, his hands in his pockets, watching his wife as she busied herself among the pots and pans. Then he walked through the flat to the windows in front and stood looking down on the street, his brow puckered into a puzzled frown; and finally he returned to the doorway.
“Who is this Mason?” he asked.
“I told you the other day.” Nell was slicing big, ripe tomatoes that were no redder than her lips. “I met him at Osborne’s.”
“I know — but who is he?”
“He is a gentleman.”
“Oh,” said Jimmie vaguely. He stood for a moment regarding his wife uncertainly, then continued: “But I say, Nell—”
“Well?”
“Nothing,” said Jimmie.
He went into the front room, seated himself, and picked up a newspaper. But when he was called to dinner a half-hour later the paper remained unread.
That was, of course, the proper time for an explanation. But how could Nell explain something which she didn’t understand herself?
She felt an incredible, an insatiable longing for something — but what? Jimmie bored and irritated her, and the very sight of her neat kitchen became hateful to her. Add to this the fact that she was both secretive and ignorant — in a restricted sense — and the curious conclusion at which she finally arrived loses much of its strangeness.
Its result was that she spent every afternoon of the following week riding or driving with Mason, whose sympathy and tenderness were never-failing, and curiously satisfying.
She lied to Jimmie. She told him each evening that she had spent the entire day at home, and that she was feeling under the weather.
“Want a doctor?” Jimmie would ask solicitously.
“No,” she would answer, “it’s just a headache.”
Then she would go to bed and cry herself to sleep, while Jimmie sat in his den staring at the wallpaper and wondering what the devil was the matter.
It was on Saturday that Jimmie’s married sister found herself shopping at Tenth Street round noon and decided to take lunch with him. She telephoned his office.
She was ten years older than Jimmie, and had two children; and she felt that he needed advice. Besides, being a woman, she had a right to be curious. She came to the point at once.
“Who was Nell riding with yesterday?”
“What?” said Jimmie blankly.
“I asked,” repeated his sister with emphasis, “whom Nell was riding with yesterday.”
Now Jimmie knew perfectly well that his wife had remained at home all of the previous day, for she had told him so. Therefore, it was obvious that she had not been riding with anyone. Still, he knew his sister. She usually knew what she was talking about.
Jimmie rose to the occasion like a gentleman.
“A chap named Mason,” said. “A friend of mine. Why?”
His sister eyed him shrewdly.
“Lord save us, Jimmie, you can’t fool me,” she declared. “You’re in trouble. What is it?”
But Jimmie turned the question aside, and many other similar ones, and, freeing himself as quickly as possible, returned to the office. He sat at his desk for two hours, chewing up unlighted cigars and gazing at the wall before him in a sort of hurt surprise.
It was Jimmie’s first glimpse of hell, and he didn’t at all understand it. Finally he put on his hat and went home.
He found no one there. He wandered to and fro through the flat a dozen or more times, then pulled a chair up close to the window and sat down to wait — and watch. For a full hour he sat, silent and still, his eyes glued on the street below; and gradually cold fear filled all his veins and chilled his heart.
Perhaps — the thought formed slowly — perhaps she would never return. Even now she had gone—
Perspiration covered his brow, and his face was white. He felt no anger, but a most potent and terrible fear. When Nell saw his face through the window as she came up the street ten minutes later she hardly recognized it.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nell calmly, as she entered the door which Jimmie had opened.
Jimmie folded his arms about her.
“Thank God!” he said devoutly. “Oh, Nell, I thought—”
Nell struggled from his embrace.
“Well? You thought?”
Then Jimmie stammered an incoherent account of his meeting with his sister and what she had told him.
“Of course,” he finished, “I didn’t believe her, but I thought — you might — so I told her it was Mason.”
There was a pause, then: “It was Mason,” said Nell calmly.
Jimmie gazed at her for a full minute, frankly disbelieving.
“But you told me—” he began.
“I know,” Nell interrupted wearily.
She hesitated, and looked at her husband uncertainly, then, clenching her hands and advancing a step toward him, she began to speak hurriedly and in a low tone.
She spoke of Mason. And when she had finished, and ended by sinking down onto the floor and bursting into tears, Jimmie stood as one stunned, watching his little world crumble and fall about his ears.
And yet the very worst of Nell’s conduct was the telling of a lie — not exactly an unique sin. But Jimmie could not perceive this. Being what he was, he was unable either to judge or consider — he merely felt. And Nell no longer loved him.
As she sat on the floor at his feet, her face buried in her hands and her body shaking with convulsive sobs, Jimmie actually felt that he was the one who needed sympathy and counsel. He trembled weakly and stared at his wife in a miserable silence.
When Nell had become calmer she rose and seated herself on a chair and spoke again, in a tone of weariness and despair. She explained that though she no longer loved Jimmie, she did not want to leave him. Not from a sense of duty, she simply preferred to remain.
No doubt it would be very hard for both of them, but she thought that was best. As for Mason, she would continue to regard him as her friend. He had been very kind to her, and Jimmie would never understand, and men were beasts anyway, and she didn’t want to leave Jimmie, and she wanted to be left alone.
So Jimmie left the house, and returned two hours later to a silent and tasteless dinner. As soon as it was finished Nell went to bed, complaining of a headache; and Jimmie sat alone until late in the half-lighted dining room, fondling his misery.
A week passed by. Jimmie, racking his brain for an explanation or a solution, failed entirely to realize the meaning of the catastrophe. He was conscious only of the pain — the dull aching pain that filled every thought and movement and ate his soul. A stronger man would have dominated the situation — and the consequences would have been extremely unpleasant. Jimmie was fortunate enough to be helpless.