The Desired Woman

by Will N. Harben

"Yes, when the child is loved as you love yours, and when you fancy that he is being neglected, and that you are partly responsible for it. Oh, Dick, you and I both are queer mixtures! I may as well be frank. Your struggles to make amends have had their effect on me. For a long time I have not been satisfied with myself. I used to be able to quiet my conscience by plunging into pleasure, but the old things no longer amuse. That is why I am turning over a new leaf. Dick, the man I am to marry knows my life from beginning to end. He is a good fellow—a stranger here, and well-to-do. My brother sent him to me with a letter of introduction. He has had trouble. He was suspected of serious defalcation, and the citizens of his native town turned against him. All his old ties are cut. He likes me, and I like him. I shall make him a true wife, and he knows it. I am going to my brother in Texas and will be married out there. Dick, I shall, perhaps, never see you again, but, frankly, I shall not care. I want to forget you as completely as you will forget me. I only wish I were leaving you in a happier frame of mind. You are miserable, Dick, and you are so constituted that you can't throw it off."

"No, I can't throw it off!" His voice was low and husky. "I won't mince words about it. Marie, I am in hell. I know how men feel who kill themselves. But I shall not do that."

"No, that would do no good, Dick. I have faced that proposition several times, and conquered it. The only thing to do is to hope—and, Dick, I sometimes think there is something—a little something, you know—in praying. I believe there is a God over us—a God of some sort, who loves even the wrong-doers He has created and listens to their cries for help now and then. But I don't know; half the time I doubt everything. There is one thing certain. The humdrum church-people, whom we used to laugh at for their long faces and childish faith, have the best of the game of life in the long run. They have—they really have."

He tried to blend his cold smile with hers, but failed. He stood up, and, extending his hand, he aided her to rise. "This is good-by, then, forever," he said. "Marie, I think you are going to be happy."

"I don't know, but I am going to try at least for contentment," she said, simply. "There is always hope, and you may see some way out of your troubles."

Quite in silence they walked back to the cottage gate, and there, with a hand-shake that was all but awkward, they parted. He tipped his hat formally as he turned away. Ahead of him lay the city, a dun stretch of roofs and walls, with here and there a splotch of green beneath a blue sky strewn with snowy clouds.

He had gone only a few paces when he heard the whirring sound of an automobile, which was approaching from the direction of the city. It was driven by a single occupant. It was Andrew Buckton. Mostyn saw the expression of exultant surprise that he swept from him to Marie, and knew by Buckton's raised hat that he had seen them together. The car sped on and vanished amid the trees at the end of the road. Looking back, Mostyn saw that Marie was lingering at the gate. He knew from the regretful look in her face that she was deploring the incident; but, simply raising his hat again, he strode on.

All the remainder of the morning he worked at his desk. He tried to make himself feel that, now that Marie was leaving, his future would be less clouded; but with all the effort made, he could not shake off a certain clinging sense of approaching disaster. Was he afraid that Buckton would gossip about what he had just seen, and that the public would brand him afresh with the discarded habits of the past? He could not have answered the question. He was sure of nothing. He lunched at his club, smoked a dismal cigar with Delbridge and some other men, and heard them chatting about the rise and fall of stocks as if they and he were in a turbulent dream. They appeared as marvels to him in their unstumbling blindness under the overbrooding horrors of life, in their ignorance of the dark, psychic current against which he alone was battling.

All the afternoon he toiled at the bank, and at dusk he walked home. No one was about the front of the house, and he went up to his room. He had bathed his face and hands, changed his suit, and was about to descend the stairs when his father-in-law came tottering along the corridor and paused at the open door of the room.

"This is a pretty come-off," he scowled in at Mostyn. "Here you come like this as if nothing out of the way had happened, when your wife has packed up and gone off for another trip. She said she was going to write you—did you get a note?"