Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Till rather more than a year ago few men of his age—he had then been sixty, he was now sixty-one—enjoyed a pleasanter and, from his own point of view, a better-filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer,—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious,—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life, and so inclining he had found contentment and great material prosperity.

Not even in those days to which he was now looking back so regretfully had Mr. Tapster always been perfectly content; but now the poor man sitting alone by his dining-room fire, only remembered what had been good and pleasant in his former state. He was aware that his brother William—and William's wife, Maud—both thought that even now he had much to be thankful for; his line of business was brisk, scarcely touched by foreign competition, his income increasing at a steady rate of progression, and his children were exceptionally healthy.

But, alas! now that, in place of a pretty little Mrs. Tapster on whom to spend easily-earned money, his substance was being squandered by a crowd of unmanageable and yet indispensable thieves,—for so Mr. Tapster voicelessly described the five servants whose loud talk and laughter were even now floating up from the basement below,—he did not feel his financial stability so comfortable a thing as he had once done.

His very children, who should now be, as he told himself complainingly, his greatest comfort, had degenerated from two sturdy, well-behaved little boys and a charming baby girl, into three unruly, fretful imps, setting him at defiance, and terrorising their two attendants, who, though carefully chosen by their Aunt Maud, did not seem to manage them as well as the old nurse who had been an ally of the ex-Mrs. Tapster.

Looking back at the whole horrible affair, for so in his own mind Mr. Tapster justly designated the divorce case in which he had figured as the successful petitioner, he wondered uneasily if he had done quite wisely—wisely, that is, for his own repute and comfort.

He knew very well that had it not been for William—or rather for Maud—he would never have found out the dreadful truth. Nay, more; he was dimly aware that but for them, and for their insistence on it as the only proper course open to him, he would never have taken action. All would have been forgiven and forgotten had not William—and more especially Maud—said he must divorce Flossy, if not for his own sake, ah! what irony! then for that of his children.

Of course he felt grateful to his brother William and to his brother's wife for all they had done for him since that sad time. Still, in the depths of his heart, Mr. Tapster felt entitled to blame, and sometimes almost to hate, his kind brother and sister. To them both—or rather to Maud—he really owed the break-up of his life, for, when all was said and done, it had to be admitted (though Maud did not like him to remind her of it) that Flossy had met the villain while staying with the William Tapsters at Boulogne. Respectable London people should have known better than to take a furnished house at a disreputable French watering-place—a place full of low English!

Sometimes it was only by a great exercise of self-control that he, James Tapster, could refrain from telling Maud what he thought of her conduct in this matter, the more so that she never seemed to understand how greatly she—and William—had been to blame.

On one occasion Maud had even said how surprised she had been that James had cared to go away to America, leaving his pretty young wife alone for as long as three months. Why hadn't she said so at the time, then? Of course, he had thought that he could leave Flossy to be looked after and kept out of mischief by Maud—and William. But he had been—in more than one sense, alas!—bitterly deceived.

Still, it's never any use crying over spilt milk, so Mr. Tapster got up from his chair and walked round the room, looking absently, as he did so, at the large Landseer engraving of which he was naturally proud. If only he could forget—put out of his mind for ever—the whole affair! Well, perhaps with the Decree being made Absolute would come oblivion.