“God forbid, dearest countess, that I should be guilty of disturbing the admirable equilibrium of your mind and soul,” Crammon returned eagerly. “God forbid! By all means consider me an exception. Most of the people I know are quite proud of their productions, whether the latter take the form of verse, or a new fashion in waistcoats, or a quite original way of preparing the livers of geese. They are insatiable for the fame of authorship. When you see them from afar, you feel yourself forced to invent compliments; and there is no lie that they do not swallow with a greed that makes you ashamed for them. And no chef, no poet, and no tailor is so puffed up with creative vanity as your common bourgeois progenitor. Compared to him the rhinoceros is a delicate and sensitive creature. My dislike of the institution of the family was heightened by an incident that illustrates my point. I once asked a man, who was a notorious cuckold, how his two boys happened to be so extraordinarily fair, since both he and his wife were very dark. He replied with the utmost impudence that his ancestors had been Norman knights. Norman knights, of all things in the world! And the man was a Jew from Prague. Norman knights!”
The countess shook her head. “You’re telling me anecdotes again,” she said, “and I’m not fond of them, least of all of yours. So you repudiate all responsibility? You consider Letitia a stranger, and deny the darling child? Is that, in a word, the meaning of all your discourse?”
“Not at all, countess. I am ready for any amicable rapprochement; only I refuse to be nailed down, and have a sentimental moral responsibility foisted on me. Were that attempted, I should be apt to flee, although I am by nature calm and deliberate. But let us not waste the time discussing theories. Tell me the precise nature of little Letitia’s misfortunes.”
Mastering the horror with which Crammon filled her, the countess related how she had received a telegram from Genoa a month ago. The message had been: “Send money or come immediately.” She had hastened to Genoa, and found the poor child in a pitiful condition. Letitia had so little money that she had to pawn her jewels to pay her hotel bills; she was tyrannized and cheated by the Argentinian nurse whom she had brought over; one of the twins had a touch of intestinal catarrh, the other of inflammation of the eyes——”
“Twins? Did you say twins?” Crammon interrupted her in consternation.
“Twins. Precisely what I said. You are the grandfather of twins.” The countess’s reply reeked with malicious satisfaction.
“The ways of Providence are indeed wonderful,” Crammon murmured, and his eyes dulled a little, “grandfather of twins.... Extraordinary, I confess. I must say that the affair doesn’t look humorous. Why did she leave her husband? Why didn’t you stay with her?”
“You shall hear all. The man maltreated her—actually and physically. She fell into the hands of drunkards, robbers, poisoners, horse-thieves, forgers, and slanderers. She was a prisoner in the house; she suffered hunger; they tormented her body and soul, and made cruel threats; she was in fear of her life; they trained wild animals to terrorize her, and hired escaped convicts to watch her. Fear and horror brought her to the brink of the grave. It was unspeakable. Without the interposition and noble-hearted assistance of a German captain, who offered her passage to Europe, she would have perished miserably. Unhappily I could not even thank her unselfish friend; he had left Genoa when I arrived. But Letitia gave me his address, and I shall write him.”
“It’s all very regrettable,” said Crammon, “and yet it is what I expected. I had a foreboding, and thence my prophecy. I thought this Stephen Gunderam odious from the start. He was like a cheap showman blowing a tin trumpet. I wouldn’t have trusted him with an old umbrella, not to speak of a young girl whose exquisite qualities were patent to all the world. Nevertheless I disapprove of her flight. If the conditions were demonstrably insufferable, she should have sought her freedom through the appropriate legal methods. Marriage is a sacrament. First she jumps at it, as though it were a well-warranted seventh heaven. Next, having experienced the discomforts which a very imbecile would have expected under the circumstances, she takes French leave, and steams off to Europe with two helpless and unsheltered babes. That is neither consistent nor prudent, and I must distinctly withhold my approval.”
The countess was indignant. “It’s your opinion that the poor child should rather have let them torment her to death?”