Loving her devotedly, although children in general bored and annoyed him beyond expression, Mr. Saltus used to quote her childish prattle with pride. A pussie cat became a 'puff-tat' because of her, and it was her tiny hands which until then had held them together.
An incident aggravating the estrangement caused Mrs. Saltus to take the little girl, and leave the apartment. Incidentally, she left his life forever. Nothing can be said to put Mr. Saltus in the right in this affair.
That wrong was not deliberate, however. He would not have harmed a hair of her head on purpose. It was the result of the one weak link in his character. As a matter of fact Mrs. Saltus had been too indulgent and forgiving. These qualities, charming in themselves, gave a temperament such as his, an exaggerated latitude to develop the domineering and irritable nature inherent in him.
The wonder is not that Mrs. Saltus left him. It is that she remained so long. They never lived under the same roof again. Deciding that the moment had come to press his desire for divorce, Mr. Saltus followed,—found her and asked for it. His wife saw in it nothing desirable for her, and refused. Possibly she did not need a new hat, or had not heard of the Denver woman's method of getting it. She had agreed to his many wishes for the last time.
Moving from the Florence, Mr. Saltus took what remained of the old Italian olive-wood furniture, belonging to his early home in Seventeenth Street, and his books, and took an apartment in the Park Madison, around the corner from the Manhattan Club. This club had been a semi-home to him for years,—a general headquarters both to write in and to receive letters, and it offered quiet and good food as well.
Moving on short notice, his belongings were tossed into the apartment any which way, to be put into order later,—a later which never arrived. With a few books in book-cases and more piled in various corners of the living-room, the latter semi-covered by draperies which were never put to use again, and various pieces of clothing he did not need on top of this, he started in to create a new atmosphere in which to work.
The apartment was small and his furniture was massive. The vital essential was there however, for it faced the south and he had the sun all day. Permitting the maids only to make up his bed,—forbidding them under the most direful threats to attempt any cleaning or dusting of the place, lest some valuable paper or manuscript be lost or mislaid, he managed 'By the grace of God,' as he himself expressed it, to get on somehow.
Though only a step away from the Manhattan Club, few knew where he lived. In later years, with the same desire to conceal his residence, lest some one invade his privacy, he gave the Park Madison, 25 Madison Avenue, as his address. The building had been torn down then, so he was safe in giving it, and no one but those he chose to tell had the faintest idea where he lived. Door-men and bell boys of the Park Madison were bribed and threatened as before, never to let any one into his apartment or even to admit that he lived there. No hermit could have enjoyed better seclusion.