The Pace That Kills: A Chronicle

by Edgar Saltus

It was at this time that Justine began to feel the full force of the banishment. That her husband was, and in all probability would continue to be, unfaithful to her, was a matter which she ended by accepting with a degree of good sense which is more common than is generally supposed. At first she had been indeed indignant, and when in that indignation her anger developed into a heat that was white and sentiable, Mistrial experienced no remorse whatever, only a desire to applaud. He liked the force and splendor of her arraignment; it took him out of himself; it made him feel that he was appreciated—feared even; that a word from him, and a tempest was loosened or enchained.

But what is there to which we cannot accustom ourselves? Justine ended, not by a full understanding of the fact that man is naturally polygamous; but little by little, through channels undiscerned even by herself, the idea came to her that, if the man she loved could find pleasure in the society of other women, it was because she was less attractive than they. It was this that brought her patience, the more readily even in that, at her first paroxysm, Mistrial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all the world he loved her best.

Madam, you who do the present writer the honor to read this page are convinced, he is sure, that your husband would rather his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth than break the vow which bound you to him. But you, madam, have married a man faithful and tried. You know very well with what dismay he tells you of Robinson's scandalous conduct, and you know also how he pities Robinson's poor little wife; yet when, in your sorrow at what that poor little woman has to put up with, you are tempted to go and condole with her, pause, madam—Mrs. Robinson may be equally tempted to condole with You.

There are—in Brooklyn, in Boston, and in other recondite regions—a number of clever people who have been brought up with the idea that Divorce was instituted for just such a thing as this. Yet in one hundred cases out of a hundred-and-one a woman who appeals to the law never does so because her husband has broken a certain commandment. If his derelictions are confined to that particular offence she may bewail, and we all bewail with her; but if she wants the sympathy of judge, of jury, and of newspaper-public too, she must be prepared to allege other grievances. She must show that her husband is unkind, that he is sarcastic, that he is given to big words and short sentences; in brief, that he has developed traits which render life in common no longer to be endured.

It was traits of this description that Mistrial unexpectedly developed, and it was during their development that the sense of banishment visited Justine. She was unable to make further transference of her affections; the lover had disappeared; the husband she had tried to love in his place had gone as well. For sole companion she had a man who had worn a mask and dropped it; where he had been considerate, he was selfish; when he spoke, it was to find fault; now that he could no longer throw her money out of the windows, he threw his amiability in its stead. By day he was taciturn, insultingly dumb; at night he was drunk.

Mistrial had served his novitiate where the pochard is rare. It is we that drink, and with us the English, the Slavs, and Teutons; but in the East and among the Latins sobriety is less a matter of habit than of instinct. And in lands where man prefers to keep his head clear, Mistrial, at that age, which is one of the most impressionable of all, had seen no reason to lose his own. But presently the small irritations of enforced economy affected his manners, and his habits as well. He took to absinthe in the morning, and, as he happened to be in France, he drank at night that brutal brandy they give you there. Not continuously, it is true. There were days when the man for whom Justine had forsaken her home returned so completely she could almost fancy he had never gone. Then, without a word of warning, at the very moment when Faith was gaining fresh foothold, the tragi-comedy would be renewed; he was off again, no one knew whither, returning only when the candle had been utterly consumed.

Such things are enough to affect any woman's patience, and Justine's became wholly warped. It was unaccountable to her that he could treat her as he did. She watched the gradual transformation of the perfect lover into the perfect beast with a species of sorrow—a dual sorrow in whose component parts there was pity for herself and for him as well.

The idea that he had married her uniquely because of her father's wealth, that he was impatient to get it, and that when he got it he would squander all he could on other women, occurred to her only in the remotest ways, and then only through some expression which, in his exasperation of the diminishing bank account and the unreasonable time which it took her father to forgive her, fell from him now and then by chance. For Mistrial had indeed counted on that forgiveness. He had even counted on receiving it by cable, of finding that it had preceded and awaited them before their ship reached France. And when, to use an idiom of that land, it made itself expected, he was confident that the longer it delayed the completer it would be. At the utmost he had not dreamed that the old man would detain it more than a few months; but when twenty-four went by, and not only no forgiveness was manifest, but through his own improvidence the funds ran low,—so low, in fact, that unless forgiveness were presently forthcoming they would be in straits indeed,—he dictated a letter, penitent and humble, one in which impending poverty stood out as clearly as though it had been engraved, and which it revolted her to send. Its inspiration, however, must have been patent to Mr. Dunellen, for that gentlemen's reply, expressed in the third person, was to the effect that if his daughter returned to him he would provide for her as he had always done, but in no other circumstances could he assist.

Had Justine been anyone but herself she might have acted on the invitation: but the tone of it hurt her; she was annoyed at having permitted herself to send the letter Mistrial had dictated, and to which this was the reply. Her pride was up—all the more surely because she knew her father had been right; and there is just this about pride—as a matter of penitence it forces us to suffer those consequences of our own wrongdoing which through a simple confession it were easy to escape. To Justine such confession was impossible. She had left her father in the full certainty that he was wrong, and when she found he was not, death to her were preferable to any admission of the grievousness of her own mistake.

At this juncture Mistrial's aunt assisted at the funeral of a sister spinster, sat in a draught, caught cold in her throat, and, the glottis enlarging, strangled one night in her bed. By her will the St. Nicholas Hospital received the bulk of her property. The rest of her estate was divided among relatives; to her nephew Roland Mistrial—3d no longer—was bequeathed the princely sum of ten thousand dollars in cash. At the news of this munificence Roland swore and grit his teeth. Had his circumstances been different it is probable that the ten thousand, together with some enduring insult, he would have flung after her to the eternal purgatory where he prayed she had gone. As it was, the modicity of the bequest sobered him. Through some impalpable logic he had counted but little on any inheritance at all; he had indeed hoped vaguely that she might die and leave him what she had; and it may even be that, had he learned that her will was in his favor, and had a suitable opportunity presented itself, in some perfectly decorous manner he would have hastened his aunt's demise. But concerning her will he had no information; moreover, during his visit to the States the old lady saw as little of him as she could help; and when she did see him, in spite of gout and the ailments of advancing years there was such a rigidity in her manner that the nephew told himself she might live long enough to see him hanged. As a consequence he had expected nothing. But when the news of her death reached him, together with the intelligence that instead of the competence he might possibly have had he was mentioned merely to the tune of ten thousand dollars,—this outrage, in conjunction with Dunellen's relentlessness, sobered him to that degree, that for a day and a night he gave himself to a debauch of thought. From this orgy he issued with clearer mind. It may be—though the idea advanced is one that can only be hazarded—it may be that had his aunt disposed of her estate in his favor he would there and then have washed his hands of the job he had undertaken, and left his wife to her own devices. As it was, he saw that, to keep his head above water, the only possible plank was one that Mr. Dunellen might send in his reach; and it was with the knowledge that before the present scanty windfall disappeared some conquest of Honest Paul's affection should be attempted that he determined to return to New York. Once there again, who knew what might happen? Surely, if the preceding year Mr. Dunellen had strength for violence, to the naked eye he was even then manifestly infirm. There was no gainsaying the matter—he at least would not live very long. As to the disposition of his property after death Mistrial was still assured. Whatever his attitude might be for the present, in the end he could not wholly disinherit Justine—at least one-half the property must come to her. On that fact Mistrial would have staked his life; after all, it was the one hope he had left; and an ultimate hope, we all know, is the thing we part with last.