Stuart’s game was brutal that afternoon. In the first five minutes, he realized that Teddy’s runabout was no longer there, and his long slugs began to tally from all angles. Afterward, he bumped home across country at a gallop; his mood was not assuaged by a note handed him by the children’s nurse:
DEAR:
Since your friends made it impossible for us to play, I wasn’t going to sit there just dripping; so I had Teddy bring me home. And since you’ll be out to dinner, I’m going into New York with him to the theater. I’ll either be out on the theater train or spend the night at mother’s.
HELEN.
Stuart went upstairs and changed into his dinner coat. He had no defense against the unfamiliar claws of jealousy that began a slow dissection of his insides. Often Helen had gone to plays or dances with other men, but this was different. He felt toward Teddy the faint contempt of the physical man for the artist, but the last six months had bruised his pride. He perceived the possibility that Helen might be seriously interested in someone else.
He was in a bad humor at Gus Myers’ dinner—annoyed with his host for talking so freely about their business arrangement. When at last they rose from the table, he decided that it was no go and called Myers aside.
“Look here. I’m afraid this isn’t a good idea, after all.”
“Why not?” His host looked at him in alarm. “Are you going back on me? My dear fellow—”
“I think we’d better call it off.”
“And why, may I ask? Certainly I have the right to ask why.”
Stuart considered. “All right, I’ll tell you. When you made that little speech, you mentioned me as if you had somehow bought me, as if I was a sort of employee in your office. Now, in the sporting world that doesn’t go; things are more—more democratic. I grew up with all these men here tonight, and they didn’t like it any better than I did.”
“I see,” Mr. Myers reflected carefully—“I see.” Suddenly he clapped Stuart on the back. “That is exactly the sort of thing I like to be told; it helps me. From now on I won’t mention you as if you were in my—as if we had a business arrangement. Is that all right?”
After all, the salary was eight thousand dollars.
“Very well, then,” Stuart agreed. “But you’ll have to excuse me tonight. I’m catching a train to the city.”
“I’ll put an automobile at your disposal.”
At ten o’clock he rang the bell of Teddy’s apartment on Forty-eighth Street.
“I’m looking for Mr. Van Beck,” he said to the woman who answered the door. “I know he’s gone to the theater, but I wonder if you can tell me—” Suddenly he guessed who the woman was. “I’m Stuart Oldhorne,” he explained. “I married Mr. Van Beck’s cousin.”
“Oh, come in,” said Betty pleasantly. “I know all about who you are.”
She was just this side of forty, stoutish and plain of face, but full of a keen, brisk vitality. In the living room they sat down.
“You want to see Teddy?”
“He’s with my wife and I want to join them after the theater. I wonder if you know where they went?”
“Oh, so Teddy’s with your wife.” There was a faint, pleasant brogue in her voice. “Well, now, he didn’t say exactly where he’d be tonight.”
“Then you don’t know?”
“I don’t—not for the life of me,” she admitted cheerfully. “I’m sorry.”
He stood up, and Betty saw the thinly hidden anguish in his face. Suddenly she was really sorry.
“I did hear him say something about the theater,” she said ruminatively. “Now sit down and let me think what it was. He goes out so much and a play once a week is enough for me, so that one night mixes up with the others in my head. Didn’t your wife say where to meet them?”
“No. I only decided to come in after they’d started. She said she’d catch the theater train back to Long Island or go to her mother’s.”
“That’s it,” Betty said triumphantly, striking her hands together like cymbals. “That’s what he said when he called up—that he was putting a lady on the theater train for Long Island, and would be home himself right afterward. We’ve had a child sick and it’s driven things from my mind.”
“I’m very sorry I bothered you under those conditions.”
“It’s no bother. Sit down. It’s only just after ten.”
Feeling easier, Stuart relaxed a little and accepted a cigar.
“No, if I tried to keep up with Teddy, I’d have white hair by now,” Betty said. “Of course, I go to his concerts, but often I fall asleep—not that he ever knows it. So long as he doesn’t take too much to drink and knows where his home is, I don’t bother about where he wanders.” As Stuart’s face grew serious again, she changed her tone: “All and all, he’s a good husband to me and we have a happy life together, without interfering with each other. How would he do working next to the nursery and groaning at every sound? And how would I do going to Mrs. Ruthven’s with him, and all of them talking about high society and high art?”
A phrase of Helen’s came back to Stuart: “Always together—I like for us to do everything together.”
“You have children, haven’t you, Mr. Oldhorne?”
“Yes. My boy’s almost big enough to sit a horse.”
“Ah, yes; you’re both great for horses.”
“My wife says that as soon as their legs are long enough to reach stirrups, she’ll be interested in them again.” This didn’t sound right to Stuart and he modified it: “I mean she always has been interested in them, but she never let them monopolize her or come between us. We’ve always believed that marriage ought to be founded on companionship, on having the same interests. I mean, you’re musical and you help your husband.”
Betty laughed. “I wish Teddy could hear that. I can’t read a note or carry a tune.”
“No?” He was confused. “I’d somehow got the impression that you were musical.”
“You can’t see why else he’d have married me?”
“Not at all. On the contrary.”
After a few minutes, he said good night, somehow liking her. When he had gone, Betty’s expression changed slowly to one of exasperation; she went to the telephone and called her husband’s studio:
“There you are, Teddy. Now listen to me carefully. I know your cousin is with you and I want to talk with her… Now, don’t lie. You put her on the phone. Her husband has been here, and if you don’t let me talk to her, it might be a serious matter.”
She could hear an unintelligible colloquy, and then Helen’s voice:
“Hello.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Oldhorne. Your husband came here, looking for you and Teddy. I told him I didn’t know which play you were at, so you’d better be thinking which one. And I told him Teddy was leaving you at the station in time for the theater train.”
“Oh, thank you very much. We—”
“Now, you meet your husband or there’s trouble for you, or I’m no judge of men. And—wait a minute. Tell Teddy, if he’s going to be up late, that Josie’s sleeping light, and he’s not to touch the piano when he gets home.”
Betty heard Teddy come in at eleven, and she came into the drawing-room smelling of camomile vapor. He greeted her absently; there was a look of suffering in his face and his eyes were bright and far away.
“You call yourself a great musician, Teddy Van Beck,” she said, “but it seems to me you’re much more interested in women.”
“Let me alone, Betty.”
“I do let you alone, but when the husbands start coming here, it’s another matter.”
“This was different, Betty. This goes way back into the past.”
“It sounds like the present to me.”
“Don’t make any mistake about Helen,” he said. “She’s a good woman.”
“Not through any fault of yours, I know.”
He sank his head wearily in his hands. “I’ve tried to forget her. I’ve avoided her for six years. And then, when I met her a month ago, it all rushed over me. Try and understand, Bet. You’re my best friend; you’re the only person that ever loved me.”
“When you’re good I love you,” she said.
“Don’t worry. It’s over. She loves her husband; she just came to New York with me because she’s got some spite against him. She follows me a certain distance just like she always has, and then—— Anyhow, I’m not going to see her any more. Now go to bed, Bet. I want to play for a while.”
He was on his feet when she stopped him.
“You’re not to touch the piano tonight.”
“Oh, I forgot about Josie,” he said remorsefully. “Well, I’ll drink a bottle of beer and then I’ll come to bed.”
He came close and put his arm around her.
“Dear Bet, nothing could ever interfere with us.”
“You’re a bad boy, Teddy,” she said. “I wouldn’t ever be so bad to you.”
“How do you know, Bet? How do you know what you’d do?”
He smoothed down her plain brown hair, knowing for the thousandth time that she had none of the world’s dark magic for him, and that he couldn’t live without her for six consecutive hours. “Dear Bet,” he whispered. “Dear Bet.”
III
The Oldhornes were visiting. In the last four years, since Stuart had terminated his bondage to Gus Myers, they had become visiting people. The children visited Grandmother Van
