Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/586

580 hand an affectionate grasp. I saw, however, that in spite of his smile he was a little pale. He glanced toward the woman at the table, and then, in a clear, serene voice: "You have made acquaintance?" he said.

"Oh, I know him," said the lady; "but I guess he don't know me! Introduce us."

He mentioned my name, ceremoniously, as if he had been presenting me to a duchess. The woman leaned forward and took my hand in her heavily begemmed fingers. "How d'ye do, Doctor?" she said.

Then Crawford paused a moment, looking at me. My eyes rested on his, which, for an instant, were strange and fixed; they seemed to defy me to see anything in them that he wished me not to see. "Allow me to present you," he said at last, in a tone I shall never forget—"allow me to present you to my wife."

I stood staring at him; the woman still grasped my hand. She gave it a violent shake and broke into a loud laugh. "He don't believe it! There's my wedding-ring!" And she thrust out the ample knuckles of her left hand.

A hundred thoughts passed in a flash through my mind, and a dozen exclamations—tragical, ironical, farcical—rose to my lips. But I happily suppressed them all; I simply remained portentously silent, and seated myself mechanically in the chair which Crawford pushed toward me. His face was inscrutable, but in its urbane blankness I found a reflection of the glaring hideousness of his situation. He had committed a monstrous folly. As I sat there, for the next half-hour—it seemed an eternity—I was able to take its full measure. But I was able also to resolve to accept it, to respect it, and to side with poor Crawford, so far as I might, against the consequences of his deed. I remember of that half-hour little beyond a general, rapidly deepening sense of horror. The woman was in a talkative mood; I was the first of her husband's friends upon whom she had as yet been able to lay hands. She gave me much information—as to when they had been married (it was three weeks before), what she had had on, what her husband (she called him "Mr. Crawford") had given her, what she meant to do during the coming winter. "We are going to give a great ball," she said, "the biggest ever seen in New York. It will open the winter, and I shall be introduced to all his friends. They will want to see me, dreadfully, and there will be sure to be a crowd. I don't know whether they will come twice, but they will come once, I'll engage."

She complained of her husband refusing to take her on a wedding-tour was ever a woman married like that before? "I'm not sure it's a good marriage, without a wedding-tour," she said. "I always thought that to be really man and wife, you had to go to Niagara, or Saratoga, or some such place. But he insists on sticking here in New York; he says he has his reasons. He gave me that to keep me here." And she made one of her rings twinkle. Crawford listened to this, smiling, unflinching, unwinking. Before we separated to say something I asked Mrs. Crawford if she liked music? The fiddlers were scraping away. She turned her empty glass upside down, and with a thump on the table "I like that!" she cried. It was most horrible. We rose, and Crawford tenderly offered her his arm; I looked at him with a kind of awe. I went to see him repeatedly, during the ensuing weeks, and did my best to behave as if nothing was altered. In himself, in fact, nothing was altered, and the really masterly manner in which he tacitly assumed that the change in his situation had been in a high degree for the better, might have furnished inspiration to my more bungling efforts. Never had incurably wounded pride forged itself a more consummately impenetrable mask; never had bravado achieved so triumphant an imitation of sincerity. In his wife's absence, Crawford never alluded to her; but, in her presence, he was an embodiment of deference and attentive civility. His habits underwent little change, and he was punctiliously faithful to his former pursuits. He studied or at least he passed hours in his library. What he did what he was in solitude, heaven only knows; nothing, I am happy to say, ever revealed it to me. I never asked him a question about his wife; to feign a respectful interest in her would have been too monstrous a comedy. She herself, however, more than satisfied my curiosity, and treated me to a bold sketch of her life and adventures. Crawford had hit the nail on the head; she was veritably, at the time he made her acquaintance, residing at a boarding-house, not in the capacity of a boarder. She even told me the terms in which he had made his proposal. There had been no lovemaking, no nonsense, no flummery. "I have seven thousand dollars a year," he had said all of a sudden; "will you please to become my wife? You shall have four thousand for your own use." I have no