The Dangerous Age Part 19

DEAR RICHARD,

It is a long time since I wrote to you, but neither have you been quite so zealous a correspondent this summer, so it is t.i.t for tat.

I often think of you, and wonder how you are really getting on in your solitude. Whether you have been living in the country and going up to town daily? Or if, like most of the "devoted husbands," you still only run down to the cottage for week-ends?

If I were not absolutely free from jealousy, in any form, I should envy you your new car. This neighbourhood is charming, but to explore it in a hired carriage, lined with dirty velvet, does not attract me. Now, dear friend, don't go and send off car and chauffeur post-haste to me. That would be like your good nature. But, of course, I am only joking.

Send me all the news of the town. I read the papers diligently, but there are items of interest which do not appear in the papers! Above all, tell me how things are going with Lillie. Will she soon be coming home? Do you think her conduct was much talked of outside her own circle? People chatter, but they soon forget.

Homes for nervous cases are all very well in their way; but I think our good Hermann Rothe went to extremes when he sent her to one. He is furious with me, because I told him what I thought in plain words.

Naturally he did not in the least understand what I was driving at. But I think I made him see that Lillie had never been faithless to him in the physiological meaning of the word--and that is all that matters to men of his stamp.

I am convinced that Lillie would not have suffered half so much if she had really been unfaithful in the ordinary sense.

But to return to me and my affairs.

You cannot imagine what a wonderful business-woman the world has lost in me. Not only have I made both ends meet--I, who used to dread my Christmas bills--but I have so much to the good in solid coin of the realm that I could fill a dozen pairs of stockings. And I keep my accounts--think of that, Richard! Every Monday morning Torp appears with her slate and account-book, and they must balance to a farthing.

I bathe once or twice a day from my cosey little hut at the end of the garden, and in the evening I row about in my little white boat.

Everything here is so neat and refined that I am sure your fastidious soul would rejoice to see it. Here I never bring in any mud on my shoes, as I used to do in the country, to your everlasting worry. And here the books are arranged tidily in proper order on the shelves. You would not be able to find a speck of dust on the furniture.

Of course the gardener from Frijsenborg, about whom I have already told you, is now courting Torp, and I am expecting an invitation to the wedding one of these next days. Otherwise he is very competent, and my vegetables are beyond criticism.

Personally, I should have liked to rear chickens, but Torp is so afflicted at the idea of poultry-fleas that she implored me not to keep fowls. Now we get them from the schoolmaster who cannot supply us with all we want.

I have an idea which will please you, Richard.

What if you paid me a short visit? Without committing either of us--you understand? Just a brief, friendly meeting to refresh our pleasant and unpleasant memories?

I am dying for somebody to speak to, and who could I ask better than yourself?

But, just to please me, come without saying a word to anyone. n.o.body need know that you are on a visit to your former wife, need they? We are free to follow our own fancies, but there is no need to set people gossiping.

Who knows whether the time may not come when I may take my revenge and keep the promise I made you the last evening we spent together? When two people have lived together as long as we have, separation is a mere figure of speech. People do not separate after twenty-two years of married life, even if each goes a different road for a time.

But why talk of the future. The present concerns us more nearly, and interests me far more.

Come, then, dear friend, and I will give you such a welcome that you will not regret the journey.

Joergen Malthe paid me a flying visit last week. Business brought him into the neighbourhood, and he called unexpectedly and spent an hour with me.

I must say he has altered, and not for the better.

I hope he will not wear himself out prematurely with all his work.

If you should see him, do not say I mentioned his visit. It was rather painful. He was shy, and I, too, was nervous. One cannot spend a whole year alone on an island without feeling bewildered by the sudden apparition of a fellow-creature....

Tell your chauffeur to get the car ready. Should you find the neighbourhood very fascinating, you could always telegraph to him to bring it at once.

If the manufactory, or any other plans, prevent your coming, send me a few lines. Till we meet,

Your ELSIE,

who perhaps after all is not suited to a hermit's life.

So he has dared!...

So all his pa.s.sion, and his grief at parting, were purely a part that he played!... Who knows? Perhaps he was really glad to get rid of me....

Ah, but this scorn and contempt!...

Elsie Lindtner, do you realise that in the same year, the same month, you have offered yourself to two men in succession and both have declined the honour? Luckily there is no one else to whom you can abase yourself.

One of these days, depend upon it, Richard will eat his heart out with regret. But then it will be too late, my dear man, too late!

That he should have dared to replace me by a mere chit of nineteen!

The whole town must be laughing at him. And I can do nothing....

But I am done for. Nothing is left to me, but to efface myself as soon as possible. I cannot endure the thought of being pitied by anyone, least of all by Richard.

How badly I have played my cards! I who thought myself so clever!

Good heavens! I understand the women who throw vitriol in the face of a rival. Unhappily I am too refined for such reprisals.

But if I had her here--whoever she may be--I would crush her with a look she could never forget.

Jeanne has agreed to go with me.

Nothing remains but to write my letter--and depart!

DEAREST RICHARD,