The Late Mrs. Null

by Frank R. Stockton

"Mr Croft," said the lady, her face flushing a good deal, "you have no right to speak to me in that way, and attribute such motives to me. No matter whom I had married, I would never give him up for the sake of money, or a farm, or anything you think my aunt could give me."

"I beg your pardon," said Croft, "if I made a mistake, but I don't see what else I could infer from your remarks."

"My remarks," said she, "were,—well, they have a different meaning from what you supposed." She walked on in silence for a few moments, and then, looking up to her companion, she said: "I have a great mind to tell you something, if you will promise, at least for the present, not to breathe it to a living soul."

Instantly the lookout on the bow of Lawrence Croft's life action called out: "Breakers ahead!" and almost instantly its engine was stopped, and every faculty of its commander was on the alert. "I do not know," he said, "that I am entitled to your confidence. Would it be of any advantage to you to tell me what you propose?"

"It would be of advantage, and you are entitled," she added quickly. "It is about Mr Null, and you ought to know it, for you instigated my wedded life."

"I instigated!"—exclaimed Mr Croft. And then he stopped short, both in his speech and walk.

"Yes," said the lady, stopping also, and turning to face him, "you did, and you ought to remember it. You said if I had a husband to travel about with me you would like very much to employ me in the search for Mr Keswick, and it was solely on that account that I went and got married." Observing the look of blank and utter amazement on his face, she smiled, and said: "Please don't look so horribly astonished. Mr Null is void."

As she made this remark the lady looked up at her companion with a smile and an expression of curiosity as to how he would take the announcement. Lawrence gazed blankly at her for a moment, and then he broke into a laugh. "You don't mean to say," he exclaimed, "that Mr Null is an imaginary being?"

"Entirely so," she replied. "My dear Freddy is nothing but a fanciful idea, with no attribute whatever except the name."

"You are a most extraordinary young person," said Lawrence; "almost as extraordinary as your aunt. What in the world made you think of doing such a thing? and why do you wish to keep up the delusion among your relatives, even so far as to drive your aunt to the point of getting you divorced from your airy husband?" And he laughed again. "I told you how I came to think of it," she said, as they walked on again. "It was very plain that if I wanted to travel about as your agent I must be married, and I have found a husband quite a protection and an advantage, even when he doesn't go about with me; and as to keeping up the delusion, as you call it, in my own family, I have found that to be absolutely necessary, at least for the present. My aunt, even when I was a little girl, determined to take my marriage into her own hands; and since I have returned to her, this desire has come up again in the most astonishing way. It is her principal subject of conversation with me. Were it not for the protection which my dear Freddy Null gives me I should be thrown bodily into the arms of the person whom my aunt has selected, and he would be obliged to take me, whether he wanted to or not, or be cast forth forever. So you see how important it is that my aunt should think I am married; and I do hope you will not tell anybody about Mr Null."