Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 31, Number 363, 3 March 1907 — Page 9

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B.K Frederic Taber Cooper

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as ft slaved 5mm for passengers at Twentysecond Street, there came the yellow roan, at. full tilt, straight across from Fifth Avenue, as though intent upon running down the car he was in, and him with it.

The Story Mere Given Complete, "Mellish's Suspicion," is by Frederic Taber Cooper, whose skill in dissecting the heart with his pen, as with a scalpel, and in laying its secrets bare has won him enviable repute as a writer of psychological stories filled with a human interest that appeals to every reader. In this story the mental torture that wracks the jealous husband is portrayed with such keen analysis that every acutely aching heart-throb makes itself felt as the lines are read, and sympathy for him is compelled, however unwillingly it may.be yielded. ! The artist who has illustrated "Mellish's Suspicion," W. V. Cahill, has skilfully seized the dramatic moment when the jealous husband has discovered his mistake and physically staggers under the force of the mentaf reaction that seizes him. The picture ably translates into visible lift tie vision the author has so clearly limned in the mind's eye of the reader.

With sudden comprehe.jrfon he remembered that the police regulations would naturally have obliged it to make the circuit of the. Flatiron Building; that was why it had vanished from sight at Twenty-third Street. Now

The cab rnnst rsit trhile a dtfttrp ft rras backed out of the way. Ten doors further on it drew up in front of a four-story brick dwelling, in whose fallen fortunes could be read the history of a slow transition through successive grades of indigent gentility. It had lately been converted into a second-rate bache'lorTapartment, of the sort that exercised no censorship over the quality or sex of its tenant's visitors. The vestibule, with the gleaming brass of its speaking-tubes and letter

boxes, wasthe one touch of newness in; the; whole shabby exterior. Mellish, reeling dizzily in pursuit, his forces almost spent, was not a hundred feet away when the hansom stopped. From the ambush of a grocer's wagon he

EXCEPTING for Mellish and the two women waiting ahead of him-at the ticket window, the lobby of the theatre was deserted. It lacked only twenty minutes to three, when he glanced once more impatiently at his watch. Behind the drawn curtains of the auditorium ripples of laughter, scattering volleys of applause, told that the usual Saturday matinee audience was getting its usual enjoyment out of the latest popular play, still running to full houses when other theatres had already begun to close for the summer. The man in the box-office was at the telephone, the irritating deliberation of his answers being plainly audible from without He had nothing left for to-night nearer than the nineteenth row. No, nor for next Tuesday either. Wednesday, the house was practically sold out; two large theatre parties. Thursday? He might do better for Thursday. Hold the wire, please. . It seemed to Mellish hardly worth his while to wait He knew from experience, that it was unwise to offer Nora tickets for the nineteenth row; she would rather never fee the play at all. The women ahead of him evidently shared his discouragement. The younger one was bewailing the necessity of exchanging her tickets for some evening next week, in place of to-night Such goot' Mitels, tool- It was so like Harry to forget and mak n appointment with a business friend. "My dear, during business hours Harry simply doesn't remember that I exist !" " Mellish sighed involuntarily, and careworn lines revealed themselves on his thin face. He wished that he shared the ability of this Unknown Harry, the ability -of the average unimaginative, tranquil husband, to shut domestic cares behind him when he stepped out over his threshold in the morning. He wished that just for one busy, harassed day he might forget that there was such a person as Nora in existence. He knew that it would be better for his peace of mind, better for his business interests, if Nora's face did not hover so often between him and the letters he wrote, the sales lie made, the contracts that demanded undivided

thoughtNora, with her small, red. mutinous mouth, her aureole of hair like spun copper, her childlike appeal, her wide gray eyes, avidious of admiration. He wondered vaguely whether other men, outwardly happily married, had their joy cankered by gnawing suspicions, intangible doubts, insidious as microbes, that found a lodgment in the brain, and thrived and bred a fever of unrest. The wife of the absent-minded Harry, having at last won attention from the box office, and accepted, under protest, an exchange for the third row in the balcony, made way for Mellish. With the spasmodic brusquetiess of natural timidity he demanded the tickets she had just surrendered, and somewhat to his surprise, obtained them. They were splendid seats, nine rows from the stage, on the middle aisle; the sort of seats that Nora always expected him to get. It was characteristic of Nora always to expect the best of everything, and usually to end by getting it Equally characteristic was her pretty imperiousness, which for, a time had almost blinded him to her inborn selfishness. From the theatre Mellish turned down Madison Avenue to Twenty-stxth Street, and thence westward along the northern boundary of Madison Square, , not because it was a shorter way to his home, but in obedience to .a sudden, unreasoning impulse to pass the ' restaurant where his wife had told him she would be lunching. At this late hour it was quite possible that he had missed her; yet Nora was one who loved to linger over a lunch table, forgetful of the flight of time. There was still a chance that he might catch 1 a glimpse of her through the windows on the Fifth Avenue side, or even have the luck to meet her just coming out, in all the pride of her new raiment He knew already how extremely well it became her. It had come home from the dressmaker's only the night before, and had put her in a gTacious mood for the whole evening. She had even donned it for his pri-

ONE MORE STEP AND HE COULD HAVE TOUCHED HER ARM. ate benefit, and had mocked him gaily because he Kept forgetting that the right name of all that gorgeousness was a lizard green moire. How she loved the pleasant, luxuriant things of life; dainty viands, lavish clothes, , the glitter of many gaslights, the adulation of the passing glance !c She was not made for domesticity, she was too exotic that was the initial fault, the source of bis unrest. She craved the stimulus of perpetual ex

citement; the showy, outside life of theatre, restaurant, hotel; the champagne atmosphere of the modern caravansary. It was in a public restaurant that he had first met her, five years ago a dinner at Sherry's, where he had first listened to those mutinous red lips, first been dazzled by the coppery glint of her hair, first looked into those wide gray eyes, and answered their appeal for flattery. She was little more than a child in years he had realized that at the time just a tall, slim thing, with a face that robbed him of his sleep. He could smile now, grimly, remembering how he had fought against the piquant spell of her precocity, her nascent grace of womanhood. It was not normal, he had told himself, for a young girl in the butterfly days of life to care seriously for a shy, reserved man like himself, already verging upon forty and settling down to staid bachelor habits. But Nora's family had smiled approval upon the junior member of the established house of Marvin & Mellish, and cleverly manoeuvred to make his courtship easy. He had not been blind to their diplomacy. He had simply allowed himself to be cajoled, deluded, hypnotized into the belief that, through some modern miracle, some special dispensa- ' tion, Nora really loved him. Even now, after five years, there were fleeting hours, halcyon days, when such a belief ceased to seem absurd. Yet, almost from the first, the discrepancy in age had rankled, in him, begetting vague suspicions, morbid doubts, symptoms of which he was slow to guess the meaning. Then, one day he realized, with a wave of self-contempt, that he was jealous he, Mellish. in his sober middle age, jealous of callow youths, with the bloom of under-graduate conceit fresh upon them, the jargon of football in their speech; jealous of every compliment murmured in her "ear; jealous of every stranger's flattering glance. That was the burden that he carried secretly, the incubus of-an -undefined,- unjustified jealousy. At times more definite-images, ugly thoughts with ugly names, had threatened to crystallize. But he had never quite put them into words, even beneath his breath, never narrowed down his fears to a specific accusation. Above ' all, he had sought to hide his burden from Nora her self, as one hides a physical deformity. Before the solid, unpretentious building on the corner, a landmark of fashion and conviviality to an earlier generation, Mellish paused uncertainly, peering blindishly, with near-sighted eyes, wondering whether somewhere behind that broad expanse of spotless window Nora was still there; wondering, indeed, if she had been there at all. The warm, bright summer afternoon was passing, and still Mellish lingered, staring ineffectually at the doorway, through which he had already ceased to expect her to appear. Suddenly a bevy of women came out together, two, four, yes, six of them. He could not see their faces from across the street. Mrs. Faversham might be there or she might not; but the lizard green moire was unmistakable, even his poor eyes showed that. He made a reckless plunge in front of a delivery wagon, and narrowly shunned an automobile, because his thoughts, like his gaze, were fastened on that group of women across the way, half hidden behind a hansom cab. Nora had told the truth after all, he thought, with a gladness that was almost pain. But as the automobile moved out of his path, he saw her, to his amazement step into the waiting hansom. A man sprang in after her, a slender man, of medium height, whose face he could not see. The other women had dispersed, melted, vanished in thin air it scarcely mattered where, if they were not. after all, Mrs. Faversham's luncheon part.v. He arrived beside the cab; he caught a sidewise glimpse of the coppery hair, the

soft watery shimmer of the green moire; one more step and he could have reached out his hand and touched her arm. The driver swung his long, flexible lash, that snapped like a spiteful cracker within an inch of Mellihs ear. The horse, a yellow roan, with gaunt, ungainly legs, started nervously, scrambling for a foothold on the slippery asphalt then lurched suddenly forward and swept the woman and her companion from his astounded gaze, around the corner and down Fifth Avenue. At any other time, had the question been laid impartially before him, Mr. Mellish would have held that a man who tried to follow on foot a rapidly retreating hansom cab through the crowded maze of New York streets, during the busy rush of Saturday afternoon, was in a serious condition, bordering upon lunacy. In the present crisis he did not pause to consider, but simply gathered himself together and sprinted nimbly down the avenue, forgetting for once to be self-conscious, his long thin legs flashing like the long thin spokes of a rapidly turning wheel ; his glasses threatening to slip from the bridge of his long, thin nose ; his near-sighted eyes straining helplessly after the yellow roan, that flitted like a thing of evil, in and out through the endless stream of landaus, motor cars, omnibuses and business wagons. At Twenty-fifth Street the mounted police, stationed there to regulate traffic, waved the south-bound stream of vehicles westward towards Broadway, through the tag end of a city block that form3 the base of the Worth Monument triangle. As they swung in single file, first right, then left ajain, an electric car for a moment blocked the procession. Mellish's first lucid thought was to spring into one of the many vacant hansoms that waited along the curb and bid him follow the yellow roan which this time threatened seriously to elude him. He waved to one spasmodically with his long arm. Then as it promptly responded, he waved it awav again. He realized suddenly that he could not bring himself to take a stranger, even an unknown cab driver, so far into his confidence as to bid him follow that other hansom. No. he could not exnose his jealousy to a cab driver; already he pictured the ironical curiosity in the fellow's eyes. Instead, he swung himself on to a Broadway open car. that for two blocks shot southward with such soeed that he gained once more rapidly tmon the fugitives, when at Twenry-tHrd Street he suddenly lost sight of them altogether. He rose from the seat he had just taken in a bewilderment of helpless indecision. But the car had started once more before he could decide to get off ; and the next minute.

throbbing beat :o! his heart rang in hi ears, shutting out other sounds, deadening thought itself. As in a dream he was conscious of softly opening doors, and curious heads thrust out as he passed successive land

ings, a hat, was the consequence of his reckless pressure onall yioVe'jew, brass -bolls. Half way up the third flight he wasr just inttime'to see the trad of the greeni moire vay. though, the doorway of the front apartluqnj:"" fowiwttv"-. iauaged -to cover the remaining disuncV&idnrus-.hii'ioor forward, just as the doc . closeuVtoeept i?tniaKhirtg; At the same time hm . kncted,Vwith wrathful vigor. - He heard her startled exclamation as the door was flung open by a man who certainly was not Windon Hinckley, a man whom hm had never seen before. "Well, my friend, what do yom want?" the man asked sharply. "I want my wife IT Mellish gasped hoarsely, and flung himself into tbm room. As he did so the turned and faced him, a woman with coppery hair and a lizard green dressbut not Nora, thank Heaven, not Nora! lie voiced the thought wondcringly. incredulously: "You are not Nora!" It took a minute or two for the truth to sink in. He had followed the wrong couple through a mile of New York streets, he had tracked them to their lair, lie had violently broken in uoon them, and all that he could.

think to say in explanation was just these four enijr matic words, ,You are not Nora!" He felt their ludi crous inadequacy, as he uttered them. "Mercy, how h scared me!" said the woman, "I felt sure that it was

THE WOMAN INTERPOSED, "JIM, CAN'T YOU SEE THE MAN'S SICK? HE IS GOING TO FALL.

at least he would have a good view of her companion, the man who so insolently appropriated his wife in broad daylight. But three stout women, crowding past him at the critical moment, blocked his view as the cab swung in once more ahead of the car. He had caught only another fugitive glimpse of the green moire, the glint of copper below the green ostrich plume, and still more vaguely a smooth-shaven, black-haired, youngish man beside her. Impotently he cursed his weak, near-sighted eyes, that left him in doubt who the scoundrel was, who brazenly rode there beside Nora, for all Broadway to see. Was it someone whom he knew? Someone who had clasped his hand, partaken of his salt, enjoyed his hospitality a score of times? Among the men who came habitually to her evenings at home, or freely dropped in for dinner or for tea, there were half a dozen of medium height, smoothshaven and with darkish hair. It might be any one of these. The names seemed to repeat themselves trippingly in his ear, in rhythm with the hum of the car wheels Jack Elting, Ted Voorhis, Windon Hinckley Windon Hinckley? The image of Mrs. Favershanrs brother persisted in recurring to his mind, crowding to the front, elbowing out of the way the other vaguer phantoms of his uncertainty. Never before, in all these months of unspoken jealousy, had his suspicions focussed definitely upon any one man. Windon Hinckley! With his foppish dress, his dilettante manner, the indefinable stamp of dissipation in his boyish face and keen, bold eyes. He had never even tried to like Hinckley. It had jarred upon bis sense of fitness to see Nora, with her. innate fineness, suffer contact with & nature that he stigmatized as vicious. Yet this antipathy was so intangible that he had never put it intc words. He had simply left the house, on more than one flimsy excuse, had gone out into the winter night, rather than listen to Windon's light, frothy talk, rather than hear his high-pitched laugh, that seemed to penetrate the furthest comer of the apartment rather than see Nora's gray eyes widen mockingly, in feigned rebuke of his flippant audacities. That was the way he had guarded his home, by taking his hat and going out into the winter night! At Union Square the cab turned east once more. Mellish sprang recklessly from his car, without waiting for it to slow up. and broke into a run once more, as though the devil were spurring him. A hundred flower vendirs with trampled violets could not have Stayed him now, under the impulsion of his new certainty. Cutting diagonallv across the square, he gained somewhat on the cab. which was fading into the vista of Fifteenth Street when he finally reached the corner. Luck once more played into his hands, in the shape of an open treach where a gas xsaS was being repaired..

Mellish suddenly felt strangely shaken, ctrangerji weak. Everything seemed to have grown curiously black, blacker even than the stairs he had just come up. two steps at a time. That was it, he told himself, th stairs and the heat and the excitement. He heard the man's voice saying brusquely, as if from some remote distance, "Well, now that you know it isn't Nora, don'C you think you had better be going?" And the woman interposed hastily, "Jim, can't you see that the man U sick? He is going to fall!" Mellish tried to get ta the door, tried to frame some words of apology, excuse, protest, all in one. Instead, he collapsed weakly into c chair. It was a new piorris chair, with gaudy plusfc cushions. His last conscious sensation was the stuffy smell of new upholstery. - - - - - . At the haze cleared from hit eyes, the woman waf holding a thick tumbler containing brandy to his lis! the woman who had felt sure that he was Sam. thf woman whose hair was So like Nora's, and whose eya; and mouth were to different As she leaned over hi he noted the.cQld. boULvioJet of her eyes, the irregularity of her teeth, one of them badly blackened. Ir the immensity of his relief he felt his heart expam. towards this clandestine couple who,iiad been so afraia that he was Sam, and who now . plainly wished him to be gone. He owed these two a big debt of gratitude for having cured him, once far all. trf hia chronic jealousy. With sudden energy lie; 'gathered hit long, thin limbs together and rose to his feel ' As he backed htmtell out into the dingy hail, with a f.hL.Spology, he felt an honest amusement at the visible relief of thit mas and woman, . the irregularity of whose Hvet had to nearly touched him. It was past their dinner hour when Mellish at lait reached home. Nora, radiant in her new iixard geen, opened the door in person, greeting him effusively, too absorbed in herself to notice the disorder of hn - appearance. Windon was here, the told him, and wonld stay to dinner. Windon? Well what of it? In the joyous confidence of Wi new cure, Mellish felt that he cou'd afford to be cordial even to Windon Hinckley. Besides, he thought, as he made a hasty toilet, it wis at most only for an hour; Norn riM have to excuse herself as soon as coffee w?- if she was going to the theatre with him to ni The dainty dinner scored the si; - that Nora't dinners always scored when they were not dininar akie. Nora herself was, at usual, nervously voluble. "How did Mra. Faversham's luncheon go off? Why, there had not been any luncheon. She hoped he had not been foolish enough to try to meet hir. Mri. Faversham had telephoned that it was postponed : her cousin had not com from Buffalo after all." Then, turning tuddenly t Hinckley, "Tell me, Windon, about that mysterious cousin of yours, Cousin Nelly, isn't it? t Your sister tays that you were desperately in love with her once .What is she like? Is she half as nice as I am As he looked across the dinner table at Nora, dimpling under Hinckley's flattery, suddenly Mellith't elation fell. They had thut him out those two yotme congenial spirits ; they had forgotten he wat there. Thn old familiar spasm gripped his heart. He realized tha he was not cured after all ; the wonder wat he had not realized it fooner. His bizarre blunder in following the wrong couple all through a summer afternoon wag no proof of Nora't innocence. To-night, like everjj other night, he wai powerleM to read the truth of 0

IT LACKED ONLY TWENTY MINUTES TO THREE WHEN" UF GLANCED ONCE MORE IMPATIENTLY AT HIS WATOt

saw the eocple descend, sr the driver touch his hatt in acknowledgment of his fare, saw her glance apprehensively up and down the 'street, before gathering up . the folds of her green skirt, and slipping furtively through the doorway. As the man vanished after her,, Mellish awoke to a consciousness that he was about to lose them. The street door had closed again before he could reach it In his haste to gain admission he impetuously pushed every one of the eight new brass bells in rapid succession. The automatic latch sounded a responsive staccato, the knob yielded to his hand, and he sprang into the inner hall, stumbling over a scrub-woman's pail, standing just within the dim vestibule. From somewhere above him there floated down through the gloom of the narrow stairs the sound of voices and a woman's laughter. Up through the darkness, the closeness, the stale odor of cooked food, Mellish sprang two steps at a time. The physical strain had told upon his strength; the

single word that fell from those ret sretiflOtft lips, sj single glance shot from those wide gray eyes, a single thought behind that serene white brow, with its wonderful crown of shimmering copper. Once more ha bowed his shoulders under the incubus of hit unreasoning jealousy. Long after dinner was ove; he continued to sit in the dining-room; his coffee growing cold before him; hit cigar slowly turning to ashes where it smouldered in his saucer. The clock on the mantle shelf struck nine, when at last he roused himself and drew from his pocket the theatre tickets that Nora had forgotten to ask about the splendid aisle teats that ho had equally forgotten to show to her. At intervals, Hinckley's boyish, penetrating laugh echoed down the length of the hall. Thoughtfully Melish tore the ticketa across the middle, dropped them in his saucer with the ashes, lit a fresh cigar, and pausing at the parlor door long enough to frame his usual flimsy excuse, put on his hat and passed out iota the satnmer nkht

Next Week "The . Peter Woman" By Hugh O. Pentecost

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