"With eternal love!"
Taking Off The Wedding Ring, She Placed It On The Table
Chapter XVIII
For the next few days there was an atmosphere of gloom and depression at No.— Riverside Drive. Below stairs consternation reigned. No one knew exactly what had occurred, but that the relations between master and mistress were badly strained was plainly evident. Mrs. Stafford had driven hurriedly away in a taxicab without saying where she was going or when she would return, and Mr. Stafford, having locked himself in his room and denied himself to all callers, was in such an ugly mood that he was absolutely unapproachable. Never before had Oku seen his master in such a vicious temper. He had practically kicked him out when he had politely inquired how many would be home for dinner, and all that evening he heard him striding restlessly up and down like a caged lion, raging and fuming, and once it had sounded suspiciously to Oku as if his master might be weeping.
The little Japanese butler not only felt hurt at such treatment after fifteen years of faithful service, but he was really concerned at the protracted and mysterious absence of his dear mistress. In the two years that Virginia had been at the head of the household she had endeared herself to all her dependents. Always courteous and considerate, never unreasonable or exacting, the servants literally worshipped her and as the days went by without the least sign of her coming back the general gloom deepened. In the evening, after the day's work was done, and all hands could sit in the kitchen and take things easy, the mistress' strange disappearance was the one topic of conversation. The cook, a stout, apoplectic-looking Irishwoman, spoke straight up: Her mistress, as nice a lady as she ever worked for, was smart enough to know her own mind and if she had left her husband there was a mighty good reason for it. The waitress, indignantly repudiating the insinuation that she made a practice of listening to table conversation as she passed the dishes, admitted that, having been provided by nature with ears, she could not help overhearing certain things. On the morning of Mrs. Stafford's departure, she had noticed a decided coolness at the breakfast table, and later when on going down stairs she had heard loud voices she had stopped to listen she had distinctly heard her mistress say: "Then I shall leave you!" This pointed clearly enough to a serious rupture, especially when Josephine, the French maid, told how, at her mistress' orders, she had taken from the safe all the boxes of jewelry and piled them up on the table where they still remained. Her candid opinion was that the master had been drinking again and that madame, disgusted at his behavior, had eloped with a tall, handsome stranger who had been seen loitering around the house. Oku scoffed at all this gossip. It was clear as daylight, he said. His master was tired of being married so long to the same woman, and as to madame, she also was weary of being married to the same man, so each had decided to try a little change, whereupon Lizzie, the second waitress—a buxom Irish girl who despised "furriners" in general and Japanese in particular—bid Oku hold his tongue and not jabber such heathenish nonsense.
But if the situation was productive of much unconscious humor in servants' hall, it was different upstairs. To Robert Stafford it was all serious enough, a tragedy which had suddenly blasted his life, and night after night as he sat alone in the library, making a hollow pretence at work, forcing his mind on a book or newspaper when really his thoughts were miles away, he wondered how he could have been such a fool as to allow his happiness slip through his fingers.
Now that Virginia was really gone, he realized what she had been to him and what he had lost. At the outset, he had taken it lightly, resentfully. He schooled himself to appear indifferent, afraid that he would be surrendering some of his pride if he displayed the slightest weakness. To himself he argued that if she chose to quarrel with him and disturb the harmony of their home on such a trivial pretext, he would be a poor weak fool to permit a woman to bully him and question rights which were of the very essence of his manhood. If she preferred to make a fuss and go her own way he could not prevent her. But when the door had closed behind her, when he saw that she was really in earnest, that she had been willing to give up all this comfort, all this luxury, to return to a precarious existence, a life of humiliation and self-denial, and all this for a mere matter of principle, he was startled.