“Certainly,” said the major. “The elder Mr. Castleton bared the truly distressing details to me at the Shawnee Club.”
“In confidence though—he told you about it in confidence, didn't he, major?” said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow.
But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “There were several of us present, at least three other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castleton made the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among his friends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that he was entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law.”
Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat on himself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voice ran up and down the scales quiveringly.
“Major,” he said, “don't you think it would be a good idea if you would admit that the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned your attention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn't you write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it? Why didn't——Oh, what's the use!”
The major straightened himself up.
“Sir,” he said, “allow me to correct you in regard to a plain misstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated. It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted—because our devastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed upon this paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. I would be the last to give circulation in the public prints to another gentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that a gentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under any circumstances.”
And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leaving Devore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to hold himself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for my boarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped one of his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes.
“Our city editor means well, no doubt,” he said, “but he doesn't understand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. He was born on the other side of the river, you know,” he said as though that explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept into it. “Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return to him and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner of speech I used just now?”