A Thoughtless Yes

by Helen H. Gardener

I even remember thinking vaguely that I usually took time to open my letters with more precision and with less disregard for the untidy appearance of their outer covering afterward. I hesitated to read beyond the first line, although I had so hastened to get that far. I read: "My dear old friend," and then turned the letter over to see how long it was—how much probable information it contained. There were four closely written pages. I wondered if it could all be about Florence Campbell, and was vaguely afraid that it was—and that it was not. I remembered looking at the clock when I came into the office. It was nearly six o'clock. I laid the letter down and went to the cooler and got out a bottle of Vichy. I sat it and (placed) some wine by my elbow on the desk, and took up the letter.

"I never heard of anyone by the name of Florence Campbell, so far as I can recall. I certainly never had a patient by that name. Some months ago I gave the letter you enclose—which I certainly did write—to a patient of mine who was on her way to Europe and expected to stay some time in New York on her way through.

"She, however, was in no way like the lady you describe. Her name was Kittie Hatfield, and she was small, with dreamy blue eyes and flaxen hair—a perfect woman, in fact." Oh! Tom! Tom! thought I—true to your record, to the last! I had long since ceased to wonder at the lapse, however, for Florence Campbell herself was surely sufficient explanation of all that. "I understood"—the letter went on—"that Kittie did not stop but a few days in New York, when she was joined by the party with which she was to travel. She stayed at the F——— Avenue Hotel, I have learned, and became intimate with some queer people there—much to the indignation of her brother, when he learned of it."

I laid the letter down and put my head on my arms, folded as they were on the desk. I was dizzy and tired. When I raised my head it was dark. I got up, lighted the gas, and found myself stiff and as if I had been long in a forced and unnatural position. I recalled that I had been indignant.

This brother of the silly-pated, blue-eyed girl had not liked her to know Florence Campbell, indeed! He was, no doubt, a precious fool—naturally would be, with such a sister, I commented mentally. What else, I wondered, had Griswold found out? Was the rest of this old fool's letter about her? I began where I had left off.

"I have since learned from him that the man—whose name was Campbell—was a foreigner of some kind, with a decidedly vague, not to say, hazy reputation, and that his wife, who was supposed to be an invalid, and an American of good family, never appeared in public, and so was never seen by him—that is by Will Hatfield—but was only known to him through Kittie's enraptured eyes. She was said to be bright and pretty. Kittie is the most generous child alive in her estimate of other women; however, he thinks it possible that Kittie either gave her the letter from me to you, and asked her to have proper medical care, or else that the woman, or her husband, got hold of it in a less legitimate way; which I think quite likely. Kittie thought the Campbell woman was charming." The "Campbell woman," indeed! I felt like a thief, even to read such rubbish, and I should have enjoyed throttling the whole ill-natured gossipping set—not omitting flaxen-haired Kittie herself.

I determined to finish the letter, however.

"Hatfield is so ashamed of his sister's friendship for the woman that I had the utmost difficulty in making him tell me the whole truth, but, from what I gathered yesterday, he thinks them most likely the head of a gang of counterfeiters or forgers and—"

I read no further, or, if I did, I can recall only that. It was burned into my brain, and when a loud pounding on my office-door aroused me, I found the letter twisted and torn into a hundred pieces, the Vichy and wine-bottles at my side half-empty, and the hands of the clock pointing to half-past ten.

"Doctor, doctor," called my lackey; "oh, doctor! Oh, lord, I'm afraid something's wrong with the doctor, but I'm afraid to break in the door."