It had taken him just three seconds to discover that her face was as fresh and beautiful as any phrase in Blackstone — in fact, a little more so — which was quite a discovery for a man of the temperament and inclinations of Timothy D. Warner.
The puzzle of his life was, why had she married him? When, some years after the event, in a moment of astounding intrepidity, he had asked her this question directly, she had replied with cynical humor that every ship needs an anchor for safety. Mr. Warner understood quite well what she meant, but he was inclined to doubt.
He had at one time distinctly heard her pronounce the words, “I love you,” and, since there had been nobody else in the room but himself, he felt justified in believing that they were addressed to him. For six months after the wedding she had openly fed this belief; since then her time had been completely occupied with her own career.
They had been married within a week after the end of their three years in law school, and had gone immediately to Granton, a town of sixty thousand in the Middle West — Lora having declared there was no time to waste on a honeymoon.
Luckily, Mr. Warner had inherited an income of some three thousand dollars a year from his father, so they were not forced to dig for bread.
He had supposed, not unreasonably, that they would open an office together, for Lora had stipulated that her marriage should not interfere with her ambition. But she vetoed this idea without ceremony. No partnership for her. She would carve out her own future, unhampered and alone. So he rented an office for her in the finest building on Main Street, and another for himself two blocks farther down.
From the first she had been successful. The New Woman had just become fashionable in Granton, and the city received its first female lawyer with open arms.
Her first two or three cases, unimportant of course, she won easily. Then called in consultation as an experiment by the corporation which owned the largest factory in the city, she had saved them a considerable amount of worry and a large sum of money by showing wherein a certain annoying statute could be proved unconstitutional.
She and Mr. Warner had sat up every night for a week, studying this problem. It was, of course, by the merest luck that Mr. Warner happened to be the one who discovered the solution. So said Mr. Warner, and his wife politely agreed with him.
Nor could she see any necessity for mentioning her husband’s name when she carried the solution to the board of directors in her own pretty head.
At any rate, it earned for her a share of the corporation’s law business, and in addition the amazed respect of the solid businessmen of the city. They began to take her seriously. At the end of a year one of these men actually placed an important case entirely in her hands. She was half afraid to take it, and told her husband so.
“My dear,” said Mr. Warner, “you are far too modest. You’ll win it, sure as shucks.” And he had straightway sat down and attacked the case on both flanks and in the center, with the result that in less than a fortnight he had it bound, gagged, and delivered into her hands.
Mrs. Warner acknowledged the obligation in private with a kiss — the first he had received in four months. That was his reward. Hers consisted of a fee in four figures, an immense gain in prestige, and the clamorous eulogy of the men higher up.
From that day forth her office was filled with clients and her portfolio with briefs.
As for Mr. Warner’s office, it was never filled with anything but tobacco smoke, for Mr. Warner himself occupied a very small portion of space, and no one else ever set foot in it.
Nevertheless, for fifteen years he continued his habit of visiting it for an hour every day, usually about two o’clock in the afternoon. He would lean back in the swivel chair, cock his feet on the edge of the desk, and light his pipe. Thus he would remain, looking meditatively out on Main Street for the space of three pipefuls; the time varied from forty-five minutes to an hour and a quarter, according to the kind of pipe he happened to be smoking.
Then he would return home and bury himself in the library with the documents relative to some one of his wife’s important cases which she had recommended to his study.
For it must be understood that Mr. Warner did all his wife’s “preliminary work.” That was what she called it — not inaccurately, for what he exactly did was to work up her cases for trial. That is, the difficult and doubtful ones.
“But,” you will exclaim if you happen to be a lawyer, “that is all there is to the case. The preparation is the difficulty. Anyone with a little wit and common sense can do the court work.”
That may be true. I am not a lawyer, and am not qualified to judge. You may take the facts as I give them for what they are worth.
To resume. Mr. Warner’s time was so taken up with his wife’s preliminary work that he had none left to search for clients on his own account. Besides, was he not the happy possessor of an exciting avocation? Any man who has won sixty-two thousand dollars from himself at solitaire, even at ten dollars a point, has had his hands pretty full.
Mr. Warner had been driven to solitaire by loneliness. The loneliness was a natural growth. His brilliant and beautiful wife, drawn more and more as her popularity increased into the whirl of Granton society, had at first attempted to take her husband along, and he had not been averse. But he soon had enough of it.
Two teas and one dinner were sufficient to make it plain to him that his position was perfectly analogous to that of the husband of a prima donna. His wife was courted, sought after, flattered, fawned upon, flirted with. She was beautiful, witty, graceful, and four inches taller than her husband. He was — well, he was Timmie.
So he went home and played solitaire.
He played for hours, days, weeks, months — whenever he could find a respite from the preliminary work. He played all the kinds he had ever heard of, and when they became tiresome, invented new ones.
Then, one day he had an idea. He had had it before, but never had it struck him so forcibly. All day it remained in the front of his brain, and that night after dinner he spoke to his wife about it. It was an embarrassing idea, and he grew red and stammered for a full ten minutes before Mrs. Warner grasped the meaning of his disconnected and halting sentences. When she did understand, she stopped him with an exclamation.
“My dear Timmie! You know very well it’s impossible. I regret it as much as you do. I... I would like to have — to be a mother, too. But right in the middle of my career — it takes time, you know — and there is the danger — really, it’s impossible. It’s too bad, Timmie; but one can’t have everything. Here are those Tilbury supply contracts; look them over, will you? They must be absolutely tight.”
Mr. Warner took the contracts and went to his room. That night was the most uncomfortable one he had ever known. He had seen a glorious vision of a little Timmie sitting on his knee, and to have it so rudely snatched away was sadly bewildering. It was this experience that planted within him the germ of dissatisfaction with life which was destined to prove his salvation.
By this morning on which we have seen Mr. Warner descend to his breakfast this germ had grown and begotten a family. It stirred around within him as he consumed his shirred eggs, and made him gloomy. Even the remembrance of his brilliant victory at solitaire the night before could not bring ease to his mind.
“Something’s wrong with me,” he muttered to himself as he wandered into the library. “Something inside, I mean.” He kicked viciously at a chair that had thoughtlessly gotten in his path. “Can’t be stomach — breakfast tasted good. I guess I need some air.”