"Oh, they had it out the next day at the bank, but Jack's not far away. He's been in Indianapolis making trouble. He resented being kicked out of the bank—which is about what it came to. And Bill bounced him with reason. He's in trouble. In spite of automobiles and the fine front they put up generally, Bill and the First National are not so all-fired prosperous. Tom's been trying to fix things up for them."
"Tom Kirkwood?" She frowned again at the mention of her first husband, but appeared interested, listening attentively as he described the Sycamore Traction difficulties.
"Samuel always was a bad case. So it's come to this, that Tom is trying to keep William out of jail? It's rather a pretty situation, as you think of it," she murmured. "Just how does Tom get on?"
"Tom didn't get on at all for a long time; but whenever he was pushed into a case he burnt himself up on it. Tom was always that kind of a fellow—if the drums beat hard enough he would put on his war paint and go out and win the fight. There's a dreamy streak in Tom; I guess he never boiled out all the college professor he had in him; but he's to the front now. They think a lot of him over at Indianapolis; he's had a chance to go into one of the best law firms there. He's got brains in his head—and if—"
His jaws shut with a snap, as he remembered that his auditor was a woman who had weighed Tom Kirkwood in the balance and found him wanting. Lois noted his abrupt silence. She had clasped her knees and bent forward, staring musingly into the fire, as he began speaking of Kirkwood. Amzi's cheeks filled with the breath that had nearly voiced that "if."
"If he hadn't married a woman who didn't appreciate him and who wrecked his life for him, there's no telling what he might have done."
She finished his sentence dispassionately, and sat back in her chair; and as he blinked in his fear of wounding her by anything he might say, she took matters in her own hands.
"I was a fool, Amzi. There you have it all tied up in a package and labeled in red ink; and we needn't ever speak of it again. It's on the shelf—the top one, behind the door, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't come back to cry over spilt milk, like a naughty dairymaid who trips and falls on the cellar steps. I ought to; I ought to put on mourning for myself and crawl into Center Church on my knees and ask the Lord's forgiveness before the whole congregation. But I'm not going to do anything of the kind. One reason is that it wouldn't do me any good; and the other is that I'd never get out of the church alive. They'd tear me to pieces! It's this way, Amzi, that if we were all made in the same mould you could work out a philosophy from experience that would apply to everybody; but the trouble is that we're all different. I'm different; it was because I was different that I shook Tom and went off with Jack. Of course, the other man is a worthless cur and loafer; that's where fate flew up and struck at me—a deserved blow. But when I saw that I had made a bad break, I didn't sit down and sob; I merely tried to put a little starch into my self-respect and keep from going clear downhill. Tom's probably forgotten me by this time; he never was much of a hater and I guess that's what made me get tired of him. He always had the other cheek ready, and when I annoyed him he used to take refuge in the Greek poets, who didn't mean anything to me."
She smiled as though the recollection of the Greek poets amused her and ran on in her low, musical voice:—
"When I saw I'd drawn a blank in Jack Holton, it really didn't bother me so much as you might think. Of course, I was worried and humiliated at times; and there were days when I went into the telegraph office and went through the motions of sending for you to come and fish me out of my troubles. I tore up half a dozen of those messages, so you never heard me squeal; and then I began playing my own game in my own way. I hung a smile on the door, so to speak, and did my suffering inside. For ten years Jack never knew anything about me—the real me. For a long time I couldn't quite come to the point of shaking him, and he couldn't shake me,—he couldn't without starving"; and she smiled the ghost of a grim little smile. "I suppose I wasn't exactly in a position to insist on a husband's fidelity, but when he began to be a filthy nuisance I got rid of him. Just before I went abroad this last time I divorced him, and gave him enough to keep him running for a while. My story in a nutshell is this," and she touched her fingers lightly as she epitomized her personal history: "married at eighteen, to a gentleman; a mother at twenty; at twenty-three, ran off with a blackguard; married him in due course to satisfy the convenances. Not forty yet and divorced twice! And here I am, tolerably cheerful and not so much the worse for wear."