divorce-court proceedings can be confidently abandoned to the admirable frankness of the sabbath press. the “strong romance” had produced some excitement in cultured circles, and provided the saltire moralists with a fable that promised to serve for many generations. seeing that there had been no defence, and that the case had progressed with unsensational speed, it had failed to become notorious in any popular sense. fashion had not flattered it, nor had it been wildly paragraphed in the evening papers. there had been no thrashing out of delicate details, so that the “mess” was not highly savored enough to please the public palate.
honest gold had gilded the tongues of unprejudiced and veracious witnesses. truth, hired for the occasion, had blown her brazen trumpet in the court, a fine fan-fan in praise of justice. maltravers’ guineas had instilled wondrous intelligence into sundry rustic noddles. ophelia, a matrimonial martyr, had been crowned with the crown of virgin liberty.
one night in early spring you might have seen a white-faced man writing at a table in the third-floor room of a bloomsbury lodging-house. a cheap brass lamp shed an unpleasant savor from beneath its yellow paper shade. the table-cloth, a dingy red, was smutched with ink-stains and the dyes of many dinners. faded chromographs covered the walls. the carpet was threadbare, the chintz curtains dirty. a few live coals still smoked in the unpolished grate.
midnight was at hand; a church clock in the neighborhood had chimed the quarter. the footfalls in the street grew few and infrequent. london, vast, palpitating giant, had turned from toil to brief, healthless sleep. her myriad fires burned dim under the stars. her great heart slackened from the moil of greed and care.
the man before the lamp labored and bent his brows. papers and a few books were squandered on the table, while under the lamp stood a bowl of golden primroses, children of joy, fair stars of the dawning year. the man’s pen scratched feverishly over the paper. often he would pause, stare at the lamp, glance at the golden flowers, and smile. his eyes were lustreless and heavy, his face thin. from time to time he would take up a written page, stare at the scrawled and erasured sheet, smite out a word with a stroke of the pen, sigh, and toss the page aside with a twinge of despair.
as the clock chimed midnight the door opened, and a girl in a red gown came in from the dark landing. her hair, noosed with a strand of blue, poured over her white ears and about her shapely throat. there were shadows under her eyes; she looked thinner and more ethereal than of yore; the june freshness upon her face had faded to a more pearly gleam.
a brighter lustre kindled in the man’s tired eyes. the vision was gracious and fair to him as some green and dewy garden in a golden desert. he leaned back from his labor, took a deep breath as to fill his heart with the breath of youth. joan came softly towards him, adorable as love moving amid summer roses. the room with all its ugly penury seemed transformed by the glamour of her presence there.
she stood behind his chair, pillowing his head upon her breast, bending her face to his, so that her hair shone bright about his forehead.
“dear, you are working too late.”
“am i?”
“you look tired to death.”
“not yet,” he answered her, smiling in her eyes. “can i tire with love at my right hand?”
“ah,” she said, touching his hair with her white fingers, “you try yourself too much; come with me, and sleep.”
he took her hand and held it over his heart.
“gold, gold, gold, what a task-master art thou!”
“is not the tale nearly ended?”
“no, not yet. this sensational stuff baffles me; i cannot force the vulgar speed enough. it is not easy to prostitute one’s art to fill the public maw. i wish to heaven we could hear from garfield.”
she sighed slightly; her arm quivered beneath his head and her eyes grew wistful.
“how much misery i have brought to you!” she said.
“misery!”
“shame and hunger.”
“joan!”
he turned in his chair, drew her into his arms so that her head rested on his shoulder as she kneeled beside him. her hair threaded his black coat with gold.
“joan, wife, never speak so to me.”
“it is the truth.”
“a splendid truth to me. would i return to my vile servitude and lose the glory of you out of my heart?”
she sighed deeply, the sigh of a woman well beloved, and looked up at him from amid her hair.
“i am utterly happy,” she said, “for we are together.”
“and that is heaven.”
“for me.”
she laid her fingers upon his closed lids and kissed his lips.
“you must rest to-night,” she said, “for you are weary, and a tired brain thinks but feebly. come, i will gather your papers and put out the lamp. i am your wife, and i must care for you.”
