Towards the Sunset.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 11, 13 January 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

Towards the Sunset.

As Jack Farquhar walked home from business one dull afternoon early in the year he found himself wondering what it was that w.is wrong with his married life. It was only quite recently that a shadow had begun to creep — at first ahnost imperceptibly — over it, but it was a shadow that deepened rapidly with each succeeding day. And yet there was no unusual disparity of years to divide him from his six-months wife, nor were there any sordid pecuniary cares to create dissension between them; but, for all that, they were slowly and surely drifting away from ono another. Letty' s pretty mignonne face was rabidly losing the look of complete happiness and trustfulness which had been almost its greatest charm when she first became engaged to Jack, and later still in the early days of their married life ; and in its place there was gradually growing a look of discontent and sorrowfulness q\iite out of keeping with the girl's age. It puzzled Jack dreadfully, and it worried him, too, for, according to his own ideas — which were distinctly selfish — he was still deadly in love with his wife. But after much thinking, he finally decided to let things go on as they were ; he was by nature very optimistic, and believed they would right themselves of their own accord if left alone to fate. But fate has a capricious way of arranging things for human beings in a way they least look ior — or like. When Farquhar reached home that afternoon, he found on consulting the indicator in' the hall that Letty was out ; but when he reached the draw-ing-room he knew it had merely given forth a piece of polite fiction, for his ear caught the sound of voices issuing from a little boudoir which opened out of the drawing-room. Ono of them was his wife's voice, the other he recognised as belonging to a friend of hers. The man certainly had not the slightest intention of playing eavesdropper when he first set foot in the outer room, but as he raised his hand to draw back the heavy curtain which divided the two rooms ho caught the sound of his own name, and the tempter standing at his elbow scored a victory. His hand fell back from the fold of the curtain, and he listened. "I cannot help it, Dora," Letty Farquhar's voice said. "Of course it may be my own fault, but I don't think it is altogether. Jack should never have married a simple country girl such as I was when he first met me. With some men it might have been all right, but not with him ; he is not the sort. I am not used to London ways and London morals, and I don't think I ever shall be." "Oh, yes, my dear, you will," Mrs. Lewis answered consolingly. "You must have patience. It will take a little time, that is all." "Time!" echoed Letty, bitterly, 'I should think- it did take time. But the worst part of it all is, Dora, that I am jealous of Jack, hopelessly jealous. Perhaps you cannot understand it ; sometimes I don't quite understand it myself. But I love him very much, you. know" — there was an amount of feeling in the girl's simply spoken words that went straight to >the unseen listener's heart — "ana I suppose that is why. My

I love for him makes me selfish, and," in a lower tone, " Avdi'se still, it makes me suspicious." " Letty ! " Mrs. Lewis's sense of decorum was evidently shaken to its foundations. " Oh ! I know it is dreadful ! " Letty continued, " but I cannot help it ; and, after all, I am the greatest sufferer by my own jealousy. But I am going to see if I cannot manage to settle it one way or the other, Dora." "How?" asked Mrs. Lewis in a tone betraying evident curiosity. " Will you promise to keep it a secret if I tell yon?" "Of course I will," the other replied. " Very well, then," Letty. proceeded. , lowering her voice somewhat, so that the eavesdropper experienced a slight difficulty in catching his wife's words. * Next Friday Jack is going to a. masked ball at the Opera House. He took me there once when we were first married, but now he always goes alone. This time I am going, too— only by myself ! " " Letty, you must be quite mad 1 " ejaculated Mrs. Lewis. " No, Dora, I am not by any means mad,' the girl answered with conviction; " but I have quite made up my mind to go." "And may one enquire how you intend to proceed when you get there?" Mrs. Lewis asked. "Why, a little country girl like you Will be frightened to death in such a place." " Oh, no, I shall not ! " Letty answered decidedly. "London has rubbed off a good deal of my country stupidity. I shall wear a mask and a domino, of course ; and when I see Jack I shall go up and talk to him just as I imagine any other woman might. Then I shall find out what he really is like outside his own home, and how far his wife is in bis thoughts when he is away from her ! " "How can you do anything so dreadful, Letty ? " Mrs. Lewis asked. " What do you suppose your husband would say if ever he happened to find out?" The girl waited an instant before she replied : "It is not likely he ever will find out," and then she added rather sadly : " And if he ever does he probably won't care." Farquhar swore beneath his breath, and very nearly betrayed his presence, but he listened on. Mrs. Lewis, seeing that Letty's mind was made up irrevocably, aad that no amount of persuasion was likely to change it, turned her attention to thu more frivolous and — to her — the more interesting side of the question. "And what sort of a 'garment are you going to wear for this extraordinary escapade, I should*} like to know?" she said. Letty laughed. " Well," she answered, " something which ypu will probably think just as mad as the rest of my schemo. I havo ordered a domino to be made for mo shaded to look like a gorgeous sunset — all glowing crimson and gold, fading away into the softest tints of pink and yellow." Mrs. Lewis was evidently too taken aback to speak, for Jack waited through fully thirty seconds of silence. "I thought you would think it odd," Letty continued after the pause; "but for one thing, I wanted to wear something which would be likely to attract Jack's attention, and for another I have always been fascinated by the beauty of a sunset, so this garment will help to remind me of the time when I did not know of such things as donainos or masked balls." Dora Lewis evidently found the subject altogether beyond her powers of comprehension, for she plunged forthwith into matters of an entirely different nature, and when Farquhar made his appearance in the little room a few moments later, there was absolutely nothing in his wife's manner to denote what a strange scheme had formulated itself in her small dark head, or in his either to betray how oddly he had chanced to overhear her plan. After thinking the matter ove-r very carefully, Farquhar came to the conclusion that it would 'perhaps be wisest after all to let" his wife carry out her fantastic scheme in her own way. Sho could not come to any actual harm he reflected, and it would, he hoped, sot at re3t her doubts and jealousies for good and all. When the night of the ball came, he started for @ovent Garden considerably earlier than he usually did, for he hoped that by going early hinaself, Letty, having seen him and spoken to him, and having satisfied her restless little heart, might depart from the scene of the revels before the night — or rather the morning — grew too old, and so escape the possibility of any disagreeable adventure which might so easily befall her. He had not been in tho great brilliantly- illumined room mftro than half-an-hour, when he saw advancing in the direction of the corner where he •stood watching the multi-qoloured crowd, the gorgeously-clad figure he sought for so anxiously. He advanced rapidly towards her, and with the faintest suspicion of a smile hovering round the corners of his mouth, he asked her for the next dance. The request was readily granted, and I they sailed round the room, exchanging a few commonplace remarks at inter1 vals. When they stopped, Jack's partner looked up at him, her bright eyes shining through her mask, and the red lips he had always so admired framed into tho prettiest of curves. " Aren't you going to take me in to have some supper?" sho asked plaintively. Jack was vastly amused at his wifes newly-born courage, but he was mindful of the role ho had to play. " Sorry to refuse a lady anything, he answered, "but I supped just before I came, for one thing, and^ for another, I never care to sup here." He watched her narrowly as he spoke, but the small portion of her face which was -visiblo beneath her mask betrayed nothing. He danced a couple more dances with her, and at the end of the second, after bidding him a brief "good night," she vanished. Farquhar' breathed v sigh of relief as she disappeared through the crowd, partly to think she would soon ba safe at home again, and partly at the tension of his nerves being relaxed. For all the time he had been dancing with her, the situation so fraught with com"edy, and yet, somehow, containing an element of 'tragedy, iiad so worked upon those nerves that" they cried out for reaction. He had noticed some time previously a dainty form clivl in gjistening jet embroideries and who3e head was gracefully swathed in a drapery of soft black bee. Aflsr his former partner's departure he sought i>vt this older one, and, after a fow preliminary reroarks, suggested supper instead of a dance. "I want to brus.h away tho cobwebs,"

he said. His new partner appeared : 'mystified. I have been doing duty dances ever since I got here," he added by way of explanation. But her manner was distinctly scep1 tical, and she remarked : " Surely duty j and a masked ball are odd companions. "Never mind," Fai-quhar answered rather impatiently, "let us go and try ! to forget everything except the present ; to-morrow may go to the devil and take care of itself," he concluded somewhat iuconsequently. All through supper Jack Farquhar and his companion in the shimmering garment buried all subjects but the lightest and most frivolous. Later on his lady af the black domino vanished with no other farewell than a radiant smile, but her departure did not trouble him in the least; supper had made him distinctly philosophical : after all, he reflected, one partner was very much the same as another, always provided that she was pretty, and — that she was not one's own wife. # * * * f * * It was well on into the cold gray dawn of the winter morning when Farquhar reached his home after the Covent Garden ball. He creptf upstairs very gently for fear of disturbing Letty, who, he re*, fleeted, must be tired after her night's escapade. ' He switched on the light when he reached her dressing-room, and the sight that met his eyes there . drove every drop of blood away from his face. Flung in careless confusion upon a chair was a familiar black glittering garment. He looked at it in an awful spell of fascination, and when his eyes moved they caught sight of a crumpled note which lay upon the floor close by. He picked it up, smoothed it out mechanically with fingers whose muscles refused to be controlled and read it, as if in a dream. It was from a firm of costumiers, and ran : " Madam. — We much regret that, owing to a mistake on the part of one of our employees, the shaded domino ordered by you has been sold in error to another customer. It being too late to manufacture another, we venture to send you the newest at our disposal, and trust it may meet with your approval " Farquhar's eyes saw no more, he let the note drop to the ground again from between his nerveless lingers. Like a man moving in a dream, he pushed open the door of his wife's bedroom. A shaded lamp stood by the bedside, and near it was a glass,- with some dark dregs congealed at the bottom to it. Letty was lying with one hand stretched out on the counterpane, but not asleep. She had gone to seek the glowing tints of the sunrise. — By Martin Downing, in M.A.P.