I smiled and pointed significantly at the cooked accounts. “Yes—here’s the evidence how sensitive your conscience is and how it must trouble you!” I couldn’t resist saying this. It was a mistake, as retorts always are—for it was the spark that touched off her temper.
“My conscience does trouble me!” she blazed out—“troubles me because I have remained in this house all these years. I have permitted myself and my children to become corrupted. I have been content with merely trying to provide against your going mad with vanity and greediness, and turning against your own children. I am guilty—though I stayed first through weakness and love of you—guilty because afterward it was weakness and love of what your wealth bought that kept me. But I thought it was my duty to my children. I should have gone and taken them with me. I should have gone the day I learned you had stolen Judson’s——”
In my fury I almost struck her. The very mention of Judson’s name makes me irresponsible. But she did not flinch. “Yes,” she went on, “and if you persist in your demand, if you don’t call off that miserable spy of yours, I tell you, James Galloway, I’ll walk out of your house publicly and never set foot in it again!”
“After you have disgorged,” said I, getting and keeping myself well in hand.
“I shall go,” she continued, “and what will become of your social ambitions, of your pet scheme to marry Aurora to Horton Kirkby, of your public reputation? If I go, the whole country shall ring with the scandal of it.”
I hadn’t thought of that! I saw instantly that she had me. With a scandal of that kind public, it would be impossible to marry Aurora into one of the oldest and proudest and richest families in New York. I knew just how it would impress old Mrs. Kirkby, who, if her notion of her social position were correct, would find all New York on its knees as she took the air in her victoria. Then there was Natalie—it would surely stir her up to do something disagreeable when she learns that she isn’t going to get the quarter of a million a year she’s dreaming of.
I studied my wife carefully as she stood facing me, and afterward, while we went on with our talk, and saw that she meant just what she said, I pretended to believe her statement that she hadn’t more than a small part of her “commissions” left—indeed, it may be so. With this pretence as a basis, I let her off from disgorging. “But,” said I, “hereafter Cress manages the household—all the accounts—I can’t trust you.”
“As you will,” she replied, affecting indifference. Probably she was so relieved by my consenting to drop the past that she was glad to concede the future.
If women were as large as they are crafty, it would be the men who would stay at home and mind the babies. As it is they can only irritate and hamper the men. It is fortunate for me that women have never had influence over me. I’d not be where I am if I had taken them seriously.
Soon after this shocking discovery there happened what was, in some respects, the most unpleasant incident of my life.