Читать книгу Women - Booth Tarkington - Страница 7

Table of Contents

THE troubled lady began to wish devoutly that the sight of Mrs. Sylvester caressing Mr. Battle had not shocked her into a fluttering and indecisive state of mind;—she should have discussed the event more calmly with Lydia; should have argued against anything precipitate;—and so, as soon as she could, after her preoccupied dinner, she went to the telephone and gave Mrs. Dodge’s number.

Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were dining in town, she was informed; they were going to the theatre afterward and were not expected to return until midnight. This blank wall at once increased Mrs. Cromwell’s inward disturbance, for she was a woman readily tortured by her imagination; and in her mind she began to design terrible pictures of what might now be happening in the house of the Battles. Until she went to the telephone she thought it unlikely that Lydia had acted with such promptness; but after receiving through the instrument the information that no information was to be had for the present, Mrs. Cromwell became certain that Mrs. Dodge had already destroyed Amelia’s peace of mind.

She went away from the telephone, then came back to it, and again sat before the little table that bore it; but she did not at once put its miraculous powers into operation. Instead, she sat staring at it, afraid to employ it, while her imaginings became more piteous and more horrifying. Amelia had no talk except “Mr. Battle says”; she had no thought except “Mr. Battle thinks”; she had no life at all except as part of her husband’s life; and if that were taken away from her, what was left? She had made no existence whatever of her own and for herself, and if brought to believe that she had lost him, she was annihilated.

If the great Battle merely died, Amelia could live on, as widows of the illustrious sometimes do, to be his monument continually reinscribed with mourning tributes; but if a Venetian beauty carried him off in a gondola, Amelia would be so extinct that the act of self-destruction might well be thought gratuitous;—and yet Mrs. Cromwell’s imagination pictured Amelia in the grisly details of its commission by all the usual processes. She saw Amelia drown herself variously; saw her with a razor, with a pistol, with a rope, with poison, with a hat-pin.

Naturally, it became impossible to endure such pictures, and Mrs. Cromwell tremulously picked up the telephone, paused before releasing the curved nickel prong, but did release it, and when a woman’s voice addressed her, “What number, please?” she returned the breathless inquiry: “Is that you, Amelia?” Then she apologized, pronounced a number, and was presently greeted by the response: “Mr. Roderick Battle’s residence. Who is it, please?”

“Mrs. Cromwell. May I speak to Mrs. Battle?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

In the interval of silence Mrs. Cromwell muttered, “I think so” to herself. The maid wasn’t certain;—that was bad; for it might indicate a state of prostration.

“Yes?” said the little voice in the telephone. “Is it Mrs. Cromwell?”

Mrs. Cromwell with a great effort assumed her most smiling and reassuring expression. “Amelia? Is it you, Amelia?”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to tell you again what a lovely impression your essay made on me, dear. I’ve been thinking of it ever since, and I felt you might like to know it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cromwell.”

“Lydia Dodge and I kept on talking about it after you left us this afternoon,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, beaming fondly upon the air above the telephone. “We both said we thought it was the best paper ever read at the club. I—I just wondered if—if Lydia called you up to tell you so, too. Did she?”

“No. No, she didn’t call me up.”

“Oh, didn’t she? I just thought she might have because she was so enthusiastic.”

“No. She didn’t.”

Mrs. Cromwell listened intently, seeking to detect emotion that might indicate Amelia’s state of mind, but Amelia’s voice revealed nothing whatever. It was one of those voices obscured and dwindled by the telephone into dry little metallic sounds; language was communicated, but nothing more, and a telegram from her would have conveyed as much personal revelation. “No, Mrs. Dodge didn’t call me up,” she said again.

Mrs. Cromwell offered some manifestations of mirth, though she intended them to express a tender cordiality rather than amusement; and the facial sweetness with which she was favouring the air before her became less strained; a strong sense of relief was easing her. “Well, I just thought Lydia might, you know,” she said, continuing to ripple her gentle laughter into the mouthpiece. “She was so enthusiastic, I just thought——”

“No, she didn’t call me up,” the small voice in the telephone interrupted.

“Well, I’m gl——” But Mrs. Cromwell checked herself sharply, having begun too impulsively. “I hope I’m not keeping you from anything you were doing,” she said hastily, to change the subject.

“No, I’m all alone. Mr. Battle is spending the evening with Mrs. Sylvester.”

“What!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, and her almost convivial expression disappeared instantly; her face became a sculpture of features only. “He is?”

“Yes. He’s finishing the interior of her new house. With important clients like that he always interprets them into their houses you know. He makes a study of their personalities.”

“I—see!” Mrs. Cromwell said. Then, recovering herself, she was able to nod pleasantly and beam again, though now her beaming was rigidly automatic. “Well, I mustn’t keep you. I just wanted to tell you again how immensely we all admired your beautiful essay, and I thought possibly Lydia might have called you up to say so, too, because she fairly raved over it when we were——”

“No.” The metallic small voice said; and it informed her for the fourth time: “She didn’t call me up.” Then it added: “She came here.”

“No!” Mrs. Cromwell cried.

“Yes. She came here,” the voice in the instrument repeated.

“She did?”

“Yes. Just before dinner. She came to see me.”

“Oh, my!” Mrs. Cromwell murmured. “What did she say?”

“She was in great trouble about Mr. Dodge.”

“What?”

“She was in a tragic state,” the impersonal voice replied with perfect distinctness. “She was in a tragic state about her husband.”

“About John Dodge?” Mrs. Cromwell cried.

“Yes. She was hurried and didn’t have time to tell me any details, because they had a dinner engagement in town, and he kept telephoning her they’d be disgraced if she didn’t come home and dress; but that’s what she came to see me about. It seems he’s been misbehaving himself over some fascinating and unscrupulous woman, and Mrs. Dodge thinks he probably intends to ask for a divorce and abandon her. She was in a most upset state over it, of course.”

“Amelia!” Mrs. Cromwell shouted the name at the mouthpiece.

“Yes. Isn’t it distressing?” was the response. “Oh course, I won’t mention it to anybody but you. I supposed you knew all about it since you’re her most intimate friend.”

Mrs. Cromwell made an effort to speak coherently. “Let me try to understand you,” she said. “You say that Lydia Dodge came to you this afternoon——”

“It was really evening,” the voice interrupted, in correction. “Almost seven. And their engagement was in town at half past. That’s why he kept calling her up so excitedly.”

“And she told you,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “Lydia Dodge told you that her husband, John Dodge, was philandering with——”

“There was no doubt about it whatever,” the voice interrupted. “Some friends of hers had seen an actual caress exchanged between Mr. Dodge and the other woman.”

“What!”

“Yes. That’s what she told me.”

“Wait!” Mrs. Cromwell begged. “Lydia Dodge told you that John Dodge——”

“Yes,” the voice of Amelia Battle replied colourlessly in the telephone. “It seems too tragic, and it was such a shock to me—I never dreamed that people of forty or fifty had troubles like that—but it was what she came here to tell me. Of course, she didn’t have time to tell me much, because she was so upset and Mr. Dodge was in such a hurry for her to come home. I never dreamed there was anything but peace and happiness between them, did you?”

“No, I didn’t,” gasped Mrs. Cromwell. “But Amelia——”

“That’s all I know about it, I’m afraid.”

“Amelia——”

“Probably she’ll talk about it to you pretty soon,” Amelia said, at the other end of the wire. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you before she did me; you really know her so much better than I do. I’m afraid I’ll have to go now. One of Mr. Battle’s assistants has just come in and I’m doing some work with him. It was lovely of you to call me up about the little essay, but, of course, that was all Mr. Battle. Good-night.”

Mrs. Cromwell sat staring at the empty mechanism in her hand until it rattled irritably, warning her to replace it upon its prong.