"Where is he?" asked Vanstruther.
"Where is who?" It was Marsboro, the Chronicle's artist, that had sauntered over.
"Belden."
"Married," said Stanley, laconically.
"The devil!" exclaimed Vanstruther, putting his cigar down on the window-ledge.
"Not the same," was the quiet reply. "Although—" and Stanley paused to smile—"it might be interesting to trace the relationship."
"Oh, talk straight talk for a minute, can't you! I never knew the man was thinking of it."
"Nor did I. Well, we're all friends of his, and men don't think any less of each other in a case of this kind, so I'll tell you the story. In my opinion, it's a clear case of 'Tomlinson, of Berkley Square'. However, that's open to individual interpretation. Belden has succumbed to a lifelong passion for Henri Murger?"
Marsboro swore audibly. "I don't see," he said, "that you're any plainer than you were! What's all that got to do with the man's marriage?"
"Everything! Everything—the way I look at it, at least. You know as well as I do, how saturated he is with admiration for those delightful escapades of the Quartier Latin that Murger makes such pretty stories of. Well—he has acted up to them. The trouble is that this is not the Quartier Latin, and that sort of thing is a trifle awkward when you make a Christian ceremony of it. Here are the facts: Belden and myself were coming home from the theatre a good while ago, when we came to a couple that were decidedly in liquor. The man had been out to dinner, or a dance or somewhere; he had his dress clothes on, and his white shirt was still immaculate. His silk hat was on straight enough. His walk was the only thing that betrayed him. He had his arm around the girl. When we passed them, or began to, we could hear that the girl was crying. Her boots were shabby and the skirt that trailed over them was badly fringed at the bottom; above the waist she had on such sham finery and her face, once pretty, had such a stale, hunted look, as told plainly to what class she belonged. The class that is no class at all, and yet that has always been. "I'm afraid of you—you've been drinking—let me go," she was crying out. Belden stopped at once. The man put his arm more tightly about her waist, and tried, drunkenly, to kiss her. The girl wrenched herself almost away from him. She screamed out, "Let loose of me, you beast!" Then she began to moan a little. That settled Belden. He walked in front of the man in the white shirt-front, and told him to let the woman go. The man said he would see him damned first. The words had hardly tortured their stuttering way from the drunken man's mouth, before Belden gave him a blow between the eyes that sent the fellow to the sidewalk. He lay there cursing, drunkenly. Belden asked the woman, quietly, where she lived. She looked at him and laughed. Laughed aloud! I've seen most things, in my time, but that woman's laugh, and the look on her face are about the most grewsome things I remember. She laughed, you know as if someone had just told her that he would like to walk down to hell with her. She laughed in that high, unnatural key, in which only women of that sort can laugh; it was a laugh that had in it the scorn of the Devil for his toy, man. There was in it a memory of a time when she might have unblushingly answered that question of 'Where do you live?' There was in it something like pity for this innocent who asked her that question in good faith, or seemed to. Then she steadied herself against a lamp-post, and said, with the whine coming back into her voice, 'What d'ye want to know for?' 'I'll see that you get there all right,' said Belden. The woman laughed again. She took her hand away from the lamp-post, and began an effort to walk on without replying; but in an instant she swayed, and, had not Belden jumped toward her and put an arm about her shoulders, would have fallen.