The Nest Builder: A NovelHale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson
General
The Nest Builder: A Novel
Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson
Marriage -- Fiction
Disregarding the paper, Felicity glanced through her mail, and
abstracted a thick envelope addressed in Constance's sprightly hand.
Stefan's letter was from Mary; he moved to the end of the balcony and
tore it open. A banker's draft fell from it.
“Good-bye, Stefan,” he read, “I can't forgive you. What you
have done shames me to the earth. You have broken our marriage.
It was a sacred thing to me--now it is profaned. I ask
nothing from you, and enclose you the balance of your own
money. I can make my living and care for the children, whom
you never wanted.”
The last three words scrawled slantingly down the page; they were
in large and heavier writing--they looked like a cry. The letter was
unsigned, and smudged. It might have been written by a dying person.
The sight of it struck him with unbearable pain. He stood, staring at it
stupidly.
Felicity called him three times before he noticed her--the last time she
had to raise her voice quite loudly. He turned then, and saw her sitting
with unwonted straightness at the table. Her eyes were wide open, and
fixed.
“I have a letter from Connie.” She spoke almost crisply. “Why did you
not tell me that your wife was enceinte?”
“Why should I tell you?” he asked, staring at her with indifference.
“Had I known it I should not have lived with you. I thought she had let
you come here alone through phlegmatic British coldness. If she lost
you, it was her affair. This is different. You have not played fair with
us.”
“Mary was never cold,” said Stefan dully, ignoring her accusation.
“That makes it worse.” She sat like a ramrod; her face might have been
ivory; her hands lay folded across the open letter.
“What do you know--or care--about Mary?” he said heavily; “you never
even liked her.”
“Your wife bored me, but I admired her. Women nearly always bore me, but
I believe in them far more than men, and wish to uphold them.”
“You chose a funny way of doing so this time,” he said, dropping into
his chair with a hopeless sigh.
She looked at him with distaste. “True, I mistook the situation.
Conventions are nothing to me. But I have a spiritual code to which I
adhere. This affair no longer harmonizes with it. I trust--” Felicity
relaxed into her cushions--“you will return to your wife immediately.”
“Thanks,” he said ironically. “But you're too late. Mary knows, and has
thrown me over.”
There was silence for several minutes. Then Stefan rose, picked up the
draft from the floor, looked at it idly, refolded it into Mary's letter,
and put both carefully away in his inside pocket. His face was very
pale.
“Adieu, Felicity,” he said quietly. “You are quite right about it.” And
he held out his hand.
“Adieu, Stefan,” she answered, waving her hand toward his, but not
touching it. “I am sorry about your wife.”
Turning, he went in through the French window.
Felicity waited until she heard the thud of the apartment door, then
struck her hands together. Yo San appeared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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