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Revelations of a Wife

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<h2 id="id00901" style="margin-top: 4em">XIV</h2> <h5 id="id00902">A QUARREL AND A CRISIS</h5> "Can you give me a few minutes' time, Dicky? I have something to tell you." Dicky put down the magazine with a bored air. "What is it?" he asked shortly. Involuntarily my thoughts flew back to the exquisite courtesy which had always been Dicky's in the days before we were married. There had been such a delicate reverence in his every tone and action. I wondered if marriage changed all men as it had changed my husband. I went to my room and brought the letter back to Dicky. He read it through, and I saw his face grow blacker with each word. When he came to the signature, he turned back to the beginning and read the epistle through again. Then he crumpled it into a ball and threw it violently across the room. "See here, my lady," he exploded. "I think it's about time we came to a show-down over this business. When I found that first letter from this lad, I asked you if he were a relative, and you said 'No.' Then you hand me this touching screed with its 'nearest of kin' twaddle, and speaking of leaving you a fortune. Now what's the answer?" "Oh, hardly a fortune, Dicky," I returned quietly. "Jack has only a few thousand at the outside." I fear I was purposely provoking, but Dicky's sneering, insulting manner roused every bit of spirit in me. "A few thousand you'll never touch as long as you are my wife," stormed Dicky. "But you are evading my question." "Oh, no, I'm not," I said coolly. "That real relationship between Jack and myself is so slight as to be practically nothing. He is the son of a distant cousin of my mother's. Perhaps you remember that on the day you made the scene about the letter you had just emphasized your very close friendship for Mrs. Underwood in a fashion rather embarrassing to me. I resolved that, to speak vulgarly, 'what was sauce for the gander,' etc., and that I would put my friendship for Jack upon the same basis as yours for Mrs. Underwood. So when you asked me whether or not Jack was a relative I said 'No.'" "That makes this letter an insult both to you and to me," Dicky said venomously, his face black with anger. I sprang to my feet, trembling with anger. "Be careful," I said icily. "You don't deserve an explanation, but you shall have one, and that is the last word I shall ever speak to you on the subject of Jack. His letter is the truth. I am his 'nearest of kin,' save the cousins in Pennsylvania of whom he speaks. He was orphaned in his babyhood and my mother's only sister legally adopted him, and reared him as her own son. We were practically raised together, for my mother and my aunt always lived near each other. Jack was the only brother I ever knew. I the only sister he had. "When my aunt died she left him her little property with the understanding that he would always look after my mother and myself. He kept his promise royally. My mother and I owed him many, many kindnesses. God forbid that I ever am given the opportunity to claim Jack's property. But if he should be killed"—I choked upon the word—"I shall take it and try to use it wisely, as he would have me do." "Very touching, upon my word," sneered Dicky, "and very interesting—if true." He almost spat the words out, he was so angry. "It does not matter to me in the least whether you believe it or not," I returned frigidly. Dicky jumped up with an oath. "I know it doesn't matter to you. Nothing is of any consequence to you but this"—he ripped out an offensive epithet. "If he is so near and dear to you, it's a wonder you don't want to go over and bid him a fond farewell." I was fighting to keep back the tears. As soon as I could control my voice I spoke slowly: "The reason why I did not go is because I thought you might not like it. God knows, I wanted to go." I walked steadily to my room, closed the door and locked it and fell upon the bed, a sobbing heap. "Where are you going?" Dicky's voice was fairly a snarl as I faced him a little later in my street costume. "I do not know," I replied truthfully and coldly. "I am going out for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps you will be able to control yourself when I return." It was not the most tactful speech in the world. But I was past caring whether Dicky were angry or pleased. I am not very quick to wrath, but when it is once roused my anger is intense. "You know you are lying," he said loudly. "You are going to see this precious-cousin-brother-lover, whichever he may be." My fear that Katie or his mother would hear him overcame the primitive impulse I had to avenge the insolent words with a blow, as a man would. "You will apologize for that language to me when I come back," I said icily. "I do not know whether I shall go to bid Jack good-by or not. I have no idea what I shall do, save that I must get away from here for a little while. But if you have any sense of the ordinary decencies of life you will lower your voice. I do not suppose you care to have either your mother or Katie overhear this edifying conversation." "Much you care about what my mother thinks," Dicky rejoined, and this time his voice was querulous, but decidedly lower. "Fine courteous treatment you're giving her, leaving her like this when she has been in the house but a couple of hours." "Your mother has shown such eagerness for my society that no doubt she will be heartbroken if she awakens and finds that I am not here." "That's right, slam my mother. Why didn't you say in the first place you couldn't bear to have her in the same house with you?" "Dicky, you are most unjust," I began hotly, and then stopped horror-stricken. "What is the matter, my son?" The incisive voice of my mother-in-law sounded from the door of her room. "Go back to bed, mother," Dicky said hastily. "I'm awfully sorry we disturbed you." "Disturbing me doesn't matter," she said decidedly, "but what you were saying does. I heard you mention me, and I naturally wish to know if I am the subject of this very remarkable conversation." I know now where Dicky gets the sneering tone which sets me wild when he directs it against me. His mother's inflection is exactly like her son's. The contemptuous glance with which she swept me nerved me to speak to her in a manner which I had never dreamed I would use toward Dicky's mother. "Mrs. Graham," I said, raising my head and returning her stare with a look equally cold and steady, "my husband"—I emphasized the words slightly—"and I are discussing something which cannot possibly concern you. You were not the subject of conversation, and your name was brought in by accident. I hope you will be good enough to allow us to finish our discussion." My mother-in-law evidently knows when to stop. She eyed me steadily for a moment. "Dicky," she said at last, and her manner of sweeping me out of the universe was superb, "in five minutes I wish to speak to you in my room." "All right, mother." Dicky's tone was unsteady, and as his mother's door closed behind her I prepared myself to face his increased anger. "How dared you to speak to my mother in that fashion?" he demanded hoarsely. When I am most angry, a diabolically aggravating spirit seems to possess me. I could feel it enmeshing me. "Please don't be melodramatic, Dicky," I said mockingly, "and if you have quite finished, I will go." "No, you won't, at least not until I have told you something," he snarled. He sprang to my side, and seized my shoulder in a cruel grip that made me wince. "We'll just have this out once for all," he said. "If you go out of this door you go out for good. I don't care for the role of complacent husband." The insult left me deadly cold. I knew, of course, that Dicky was so blinded by rage and jealousy that he had no idea of what he was saying. But ungovernable as I knew his temper to be, he had passed the limits of my forebearance. "I will answer that speech in 10 minutes," I said and walked into my room again. For I had come to a decision as startling as it was sudden. I hastily threw some most necessary things into a bag. Then I put a ten-dollar bill of the housekeeping money into my purse, resolving to send it back to Dicky as soon as I could get access to my own tiny bank account, the remnant of my teaching savings. Into a parcel I placed the rest of the housekeeping money, my wedding and engagement rings and the lavalliere which Dicky had given me as a wedding present. I put them in the back of the top drawer of my dressing table, for I knew if I handed them to Dicky in his present frame of mind he would destroy them. Then I walked steadily into the living room, bag in hand. Dicky was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the murmur of voices in his mother's room. I went to the door and knocked. Dicky threw it open, his face still showing the marks of his anger. "You will find the housekeeping money in the top drawer of my dressing table," I said calmly. "I will send you my address as soon as I have one, and you will please have Katie pack up my things and send them to me." I turned and went swiftly to the door. As I closed it after me, I thought I heard Dicky cry out hoarsely. But I did not stop. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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