Ah, the postscript! It suggested a thing which Hayward had not thought of before. He began to read the society notes in the metropolitan dailies, with special reference to Newport and Bar Harbor gossip, and with more especial reference to Miss Helen Phillips' doings thereat. He bought one or another of the papers at the village every day, and studied them religiously. In the very first was the interesting item that Mr. Harry Lodge was spending a time at Newport. So was Helen, as Hayward knew, though that paper did not say so. But the next day's issue did: and he began to exercise his brain with a continuous problem of its own devising. The problem was to figure out in his imagination the details of Helen's daily life.
Some days the papers said nothing of her, and then there would be so much that her husband resented the intrusion upon the right of privacy which the correspondents so ruthlessly invaded,—but he welcomed the news of her. The President's daughter was a public personage, and the great newspapers did not hesitate to treat her as such. Her comings and goings, her graces and beauty, her dresses and dances, her thoughts and her tastes, her wit and her charm were never-ending sources of supply for the bright young men who were paid by the column for their "stuff." Hayward read every word of it—though a Harvard man ought to have had more sense: and Mr. Lodge began to figure more and more largely in "the conditions of the problem."
Hayward made no allowance for reportorial zeal or mendacity, the first always much, and the last, while unusual, always possible. The young gentlemen furnished him enough to think about, and his imagination began to add enough, and more than enough, to worry about. When imagination sets out to go wrong it invariably goes badly wrong, for the reason that it plays a game without a limit.
However, the footman's imaginings were not entirely without provocation. As the days passed, Helen's letters became mere scraps, generally tender, sometimes quite tender, but hurried, snatchy, with long silences between. To supply the lack of authentic information of her, her husband studied more assiduously the newspaper columns: and the poisoned tooth of jealousy struck deeper into his heart. At last, between Helen's indifference and the nagging news-notes, he could not endure it longer. He wrote her a protest hot with the fever of heart-burning and of outraged love. He re-read that letter a dozen times in indecision—and trembled as he dropped it in the box.... Nervously he waited for an answer,—and yet he waited.... The silence grew ominous.... His fears grew also. But why, thought he, should he fear? She was his wife, and he had the right to protest.... His anger rose at her contemptuous disregard of him: his anger—and his fear. He knew she was bound to him past undoing. Nevertheless, his fears did abide and thicken, while the summer and the silence drew along slowly hand in hand.
* * * * *
September had come, bringing yet no letter from his wife to fetch the confusion of Hayward's fear, his resentment, his love and his jealousy to something of peaceful order. His spirit was already beset with wild imaginings and desire, when one day he opened a Journal to read:
ROMANCE IN HIGH PLACES
The President's Daughter, Besought
By Eligibles of Many Lands, Will
Wed An American Citizen
Superb American Beauty Follows Her Heart
Engagement of Miss Helen Phillips and Mr. Harry
Lodge
Hayward sat down on the first thing that offered itself. He felt just a little uncertain about standing up. He read the staring headlines over again, and, hot and cold by turns, plunged into the details of this High Romance.
Unbelievable? Beyond doubt. Unthinkable even—to him who knew. But the fabrication artist hammered his brain and heart with such a mass of detail, with such a crushing tone of assuredness and authority, that the footman's thoughts and beliefs were pounded into stupefaction and he knew neither what to think nor what to believe. His brain jumped to recall the details of their marriage, in fearful search of a possible defect or omission which might vitiate it. It had been very hurriedly done, all superfluities were omitted, but the officer had assured him that they were hard and fast man and wife.