“‘It is therefore a pity that Miss Jack’s brilliant talent should not have had better fare to feed on than was given it last evening at the Arlington. For the play itself, we must reluctantly admit, was neither----’”
“Well,” said Mr. Jack, stopping abruptly and putting down the paper, “the rest of it is you know”—he shrugged slightly—“sort of soso. Neither good nor bad. He sort of pans it.—But say!” he cried, with jocular indignation. “I like the nerve of that guy! Where does he get this Miss Esther Jack stuff? Where do I come in?” he said. “Don’t I get any credit at all for being your husband? You know,” he said, “I’d like to get in somewhere if it’s only a seat in the second balcony. Of course”—and now he began to speak in the impersonal manner that people often use when they are being heavily sarcastic, addressing himself to the vacant air as if some invisible auditor were there, and as if he himself were only a detached observer—“of course, he’s nothing but her husband, anyway. What is he? Bah!” he said scornfully and contemptuously. “Nothing but a business man who doesn’t deserve to have such a brilliant woman for his wife! What does be know about art? Can he appreciate her? Can he understand anything she does? Can he say—what is it this fellow says?” he demanded, suddenly looking at the paper with an intent stare and then reading from it again in an affected tone—“‘a faultless and unobtrusive décor which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon.’”
“I know,” she said with pitying contempt, as if the florid words of the reviewer aroused in her no other emotion, although the pleasure which the reviewer’s praise had given her was still legible in her face. “I know. Isn’t it pathetic? They’re all so fancy, these fellows! They make me tired!”
“‘Hers is a talent that needs make obeisance to no one,’” Mr. Jack continued. “Now that’s a good one! Could her husband think of a thing like that? No!” he cried suddenly, shaking his head with a scornful laugh and waving a plump forefinger sideways before him. “Her husband is not smart enough!” he cried. “He is not good enough! He’s nothing but a business man! He can’t appreciate her!”—and all at once, to her amazement, she saw that his eyes were shot with tears, and that the lenses of his spectacles were being covered with a film of mist.
She stared at him wonderingly, her face bent towards him in an expression of startled and protesting concern, but at the same moment she was feeling, as she had often felt; that there was something obscure and strange in life which she had never been able to find out about or to express. For she knew that this unexpected and reasonless display of strong feeling in her husband bore no relation whatever to the review in the paper. His chagrin at having the reviewer refer to her as “Miss” was nothing more than a playful and jocular pretence. She knew that he was really bursting with elation because of her success.
With a sudden poignant and wordless pity—for whom, for what, she could not say—she had an instant picture of the great chasms downtown where he would spend his day, and where, in the furious drive and turmoil of his business, excited, prosperous-looking men would seize his arm or clap him on the back and shout:
“Say, have you seen to-day’s Herald-Tribune? Did you read what it had to say about your wife? Aren’t you proud of her? Congratulations!”
She could also see his ruddy face beginning to blush and burn brick-red with pleasure as he received these tributes, and as he tried to answer them with an amused and tolerant smile, and a few casual words of acknowledgment as if to say:
“Yes, I think I did see some mention of her. But of course you can hardly expect me to be excited by a thing like that. That’s an old story to us now. They’ve said that kind of thing so often that we’re used to it.”
When he came home that night he would repeat all that had been said to him, and although he would do it with an air of faintly cynical amusement, she knew that his satisfaction would be immense and solid. She knew, too, that his pride would be enhanced by the knowledge that the wives of these rich men—handsome Jewesses most of them, as material-minded in their quest for what was fashionable in the world of art as were their husbands for what was profitable in the world of business—would also read of her success, would straightway go to witness it themselves, and then would speak of it in brilliant chambers of the night, where the glowing air would take on an added spice of something exciting and erotic from their handsome and sensual-looking faces.