“How can I tell?” The response betrayed an irritable nuance.
“I didn’t mean to put the question so bluntly. The reason I ask is a simple one. I studied a case not unlike the one you narrated. It is just as sordid and commonplace. My artist, also a painter, had married a pupil whom he taught—as much as she could absorb. She hadn’t much talent; it was the sort you see expressed on fans and bon-bon boxes.
“She might have been all right if her admiring friends had not told her that she had more talent than her husband—really, there wasn’t enough between them both to set the river on fire. However, she devilled him so effectually that he took a separate studio to get away from the sound of her voice and from their home. Like your painter, he turned day into night, but with a difference; he made illustrations for the magazines and newspapers, painted cheap portraits, demeaned himself generally to get money enough to run the house. She enjoyed herself, flirted, went into society of some sort, a cheap compromise between Bohemia and the frayed fringe of Fifth Avenue—you may not know the variety, as you are a member of another profession. It is diverting, this society, because it is as false as the hair on the head of its women. The bohemian side largely consists of bad claret, worse music, and ghastly studio teas; its fashionable side, poverty-stricken grand ladies with tarnished reputations. I’ve seen it all. One of the sights of greater Gotham is this glittering set of fakirs. The woman I speak of was whirled off her feet by the cheap show. She was a fresh, pretty little girl when she came here from a small town up State. Her friends were ambitious fools, she was green—and very vain. So vain! Then her name crept into the newspapers; it’s hard work keeping out of them nowadays. She was called ‘The beautiful Mrs. Somebody, who painted exquisite miniatures of socially prominent ladies’; you know the style of such rot? The horror of it! Rather you don’t, for you have never lived in this particular set——”
“But, I do, I do!” cried Marden. “My client told me something of it.” Serle sneered.
“She didn’t tell you much or you might have asked her whether there wasn’t another side to her case. The girl I am talking about went the pace; and, as an old philosopher on the police force remarks: ‘When a woman is heading for hell, don’t try to stop her; it’s a waste of time.’ Her husband saw it and he did try. Her friends knew it and helped her on her merry way. The painter even sent her to Europe, and with her some of her friends to keep her company, if they couldn’t keep her straight. Well—Paris is worse than poison for such women. She was soon back in New York, leaving behind her a sweet record, many unpaid bills and with a half a dozen fools, picked up, God knows where, at her heels. And then he went away. It was too much. However, being a woman, she won all the sympathy. Her story was believed, not his, and——”
“Singular coincidence. But wasn’t the husband to blame a little?”
“Oh!” said Vincent. “Men are always to blame.”
“Could he have forgiven her?”
“He did better, he forgot her.”
“Did she go to the bad?” sympathetically inquired Marden.