Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 6

That affair over, he remembered the ring he had given and the girl to whom he was engaged. In spite of living in a social world poles apart from Mrs.

A----, and in spite of absence and travel, rumors of the affair had filtered to his fiancee. Straightforward herself, scorning subterfuge as weakness, she asked him to tell her the truth. With righteous indignation Mr. Saltus denied it in toto, declaring it was an invention intended to discredit him in her eyes. It was in this that he made the mistake of his life.

Talking it over with me years afterward, he admitted that had he told her the truth, loving him as she did, she would probably in the end have forgiven him. It was the streak of fear--fear of a moment's unpleasantness, which he might have faced then and there and surmounted--which was his undoing. Taking the easiest way for the time being, he reiterated his denials.

In glancing over the scenario of Edgar Saltus' life, this act, at the pinnacle of his popularity and fame, may in the region behind effects have set in motion forces which tore the peplum of popularity from him, and in spite of his genius pushed him into semi-obscurity at the last.

His denials accepted, and there being no reason for delay, he married Elsie Smith in Paris in 1895. It should have been a happy marriage, the two having sufficient in common and neither being in their first youth. Its rapid failure is therefore all the more pathetic.

Going from Paris to the south of France, the first mishap was that of breaking his ankle. Unable to stand pain, Mr. Saltus fainted three times while it was being set. That rather disgusted his wife. This accident led to their first misunderstanding, when, in answering a telegram from Mrs.

Saltus Sr., news of the accident was excluded. Unwilling to hear anything of an unpleasant nature himself, Mr. Saltus was equally unwilling to tell any one he loved of a disagreeable episode. The memory of his early life and training was at the bottom of this, and from one aspect it was a most lovable quality.

Asked by Mr. Saltus why she had spoken of the accident, his wife replied that she had but told the truth. At this Mr. Saltus flew into a rage, declaring, as he used to put in his copy, "Truth must be pleasant, or else withheld."

The incident was slight, but that which followed was not so. He being unable because of his ankle to get about freely, and wanting some cigarettes from a trunk, Mrs. Saltus volunteered to get them. She got the shock and surprise of her life as well. Carelessness over his personal effects was a characteristic of Mr. Saltus'. That carelessness was his undoing upon this occasion. Beside the cigarettes lay a letter from Mrs.

A----. His wife read it. There and then she knew she had married him as the result of a fabrication. A scene followed. Furious at his detection, Mr.

Saltus upbraided her for reading a letter not intended for her eyes. It was the beginning of the end.

In one of Mr. Saltus' note books is the copy of a letter sent to his wife shortly after the episode:

Elsie:--

To be quite candid with you I cannot be candid. I cannot write to you as I used to do. I no longer know what you will keep to yourself, what you will repeat, nor yet how you will distort my words. The flow of confidence is checked. An artery has been severed....

If reading has given you any idea of what a battle is, you will remember that in the excitement of danger men may be shot and slashed and not notice their wounds until the fight is at an end.

Not until I got here did I realize what you had done in telling your mother you had married me under compulsion. Then I discovered that during the fight which I had entered single handed for your sake, I had been shot--shot from behind, shot by you.

There has been a great change in the weather, from being very hot it has become quite cool. I hope you are well and enjoying yourself.

As ever, E. S.

The letter speaks for itself. In the same note book are entries made during the same time:--

May 3rd, 1896.

Problem:--"Which is harder; for a woman to live under the same roof with a man whom she detests, or for a man to live under the same roof with a woman who detests him?"

"Every day she invents some new way of being disagreeable."

"Love should have but one punishment for the wrongdoer,--that is, forgiveness."

"Injuries are writ in iron,--kindnesses scrawled in sand."

Again November 13th.

"Elsie having told me:--

1. That I can ask nothing of her.

2. That her affairs are no concern of mine.

3. That hereafter she will give no orders for me:

We lead separate lives,--but into my life I open windows. Against her own she closes doors."

One cannot at this day know or judge the inner ethics of it all. Mr.

Saltus' side only has been poured into my ears. One thing, however, is certain. Mrs. Saltus, who suffered deeply at his hands, considered herself more than justified in all that she did.

The fool blames others for the tragedies of life. The sage blames no one.

He knows that everything which happens is but the result of causes beyond his control. He learns from suffering and defeat. With Epictetus he says "We should wish things to be as they are."

CHAPTER V

Returning to the United States with his wife, Edgar Saltus took an apartment in the Florence in East 18th street, where, on an upper floor, his mother had lived for some time. Though their relations were strained to the breaking point, a link held them. Mrs. Saltus expected to become a mother in the autumn of 1897.

It was at this juncture that Mr. Saltus thought of journalism. His popularity as a novelist as well as his exchequer had dwindled. This was directly due to his divorce, the fighting of which had been expensive both in coin and character. Journalism held out a hand. A literary man should, he believed, be able to tackle anything with his pen.

The New York Journal, as the American was then called, gave him his first a.s.signment. It was to go to Sing Sing prison and, seeing a murderer electrocuted, write it up from his unique angle. That, for a man who could not hear about a cut finger without shuddering! It might have been a knock-out the first day. All night he fought with himself. To refuse the first a.s.signment meant having the door of journalism shut in his face. To go and faint at the sight, might mean worse.

With characteristic ingenuity he mapped out a plan. "Go to Sing Sing prison? With pleasure." Imagination being one of his greatest a.s.sets, he sat up all night picturing and then writing the scene, taking a new slant on it, peppering his copy with witticism and metaphors; and the work was done. One might suppose he had supped on electrocutions.

Stuffing the copy in his pocket he went,--went to the death house, and in spite of his trembling legs, went with the officials near the chair itself.

Then he closed his eyes. Next morning his article appeared, the editor complimenting him; "Edgar Saltus only could have seen so much in so little," he said.

Thereafter he was launched as a journalist, writing Sunday specials almost continuously. With this, and with Collier's Weekly, for which he edited a column called The Note Book, and a history which he was compiling for Collier's also, Mr. Saltus' working hours were ten out of the twenty-four, and his output greater than at any time since he had flowered into print.

Working continuously when indoors, taking his meals at the old Everett House, then on the upper corner of Union Square, he lived in a world of his own, accepting things as they were.

Writing of him at that time Town Topics said:--

"Time deals gently with Edgar Saltus. In spite of his arduous literary labours he is the same Edgar he was fifteen years ago. Slick, dark, jaunty.

He has not taken on flesh and preserves the slim youthful shape of years ago. Tripping up the Avenue a day or two ago in his new straw hat and blue serge suit it was hard to believe that he was not a summer man of this year's vintage. How does he do it? Concerning his work a pretty woman once said to him, 'Mr. Saltus, I never know what construction to put on your books.' 'Put the worst,' was the author's reply."

The following summers he spent with his mother at Narragansett Pier. Second only to Newport in that day, it was a most fashionable resort. Smartness and beauty vied with each other not only in Sherry's Casino but in the large hotels which no longer exist. The smart set absent from Newport were to be found at the Pier. Bar Harbor excepted, there was no where else to go and swim--in the swim.

At this epoch, in addition to his fame as a novelist and journalist, Mr.

Saltus added that of being a Don Juan and a Casanova rolled into one, with a bit thrown in for good measure. They paled beside the reputation enveloping him. A whisper followed his footsteps. It was to the effect that not only had his first wife been glad to escape with her life but that his second was but waiting the psychological moment to follow suit.

Young girls were warned against being seen with him. Elder women had to be restrained from flinging themselves in his way. When he appeared in the Casino, he at once became the center of interest. This was understandable, for he was startlingly handsome. A few years over forty,--his thick black hair parted in the center,--his chiselled features emphasized by the tilt of his head,--his small moustache twisted to a hair,--he gazed upon the world through eyes of pansy purple, which, while contemptuous, were saddened by all that he had suppressed in silence. Slight, scrupulously turned out, a walking stick always in his hand, he stood in relief against the other men at the Pier--an Olympian in a world of mortals.

A connection of my family,--a childhood playmate of my cousins, and a companion in youth of my eldest half-brother, Mr. Saltus was hurled into my life by a huge wave. We were in bathing at the time.

Spending that summer at Narragansett with my brother, happy in the vacation from school, where I misused the time for practicing music in scribbling, I imagined myself an embryonic Ouida. In the circ.u.mstances a Ouidaesque hero seemed worth bothering with.