Chapter 11
Chapter 11 of But Gentleman Mary Burnett's by Anita Luce. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Jen Broda. Chapter 11 Well, Dorothy settled down with Lester and had an opportunity to listen to his conversation.
And that was when she seemed to detect that he had started out in life as a streetcar conductor, and he had learned to play the saxophone by mail at a correspondence school to become the life of the party. But his brain still retained the ideas of a streetcar conductor, and although he constantly conversed, he really said so little that Dorothy would finally have to tell him to save his
breath for his saxophone. And then words would pass between them, and finally other objects got to passing between them, like heavy iron ornaments and crockery ash trays for instance, and Dorothy really began to wonder if marriage was a failure. But Dorothy thought it all over, and she finally decided to try and stand him, because, after
all, she had promised a Lutheran minister at New Jersey that she would whether she liked it or not. And then Dorothy remembered that she had fallen in love with him while he was playing the saxophone, so she asked him to bring home his saxophone on Sunday, and they would have a musical afternoon and she might fall in love with him all over again.
So on Sunday afternoon, Dorothy got up and cooked him quite a delicious breakfast and tried to be more like a bride than usual. And after breakfast, she brought out the saxophone, and Dorothy told Lester to play her some blues, because blues always made Dorothy sentimental. But it turned out that the kind of blues that Lester played when he was all alone by himself
were too depressing for human ears to hear, and that was when Dorothy learned what a conductor means to a saxophone player. Well, Dorothy finally had to ask Lester to stop, but the quarrel they had when she did And finally, Dorothy locked herself up in the bedroom and called up the Western Union to send a cablegram to Charlie Breen and ask him the name of some lawyer, because she had
decided that Lester was incompatible. So Lester heard every word, and he nearly smashed the door down, and Dorothy came out to deny his insinuations. And then he hit her with a small lamp. But Dorothy picked up an ant iron in the shape of an antique Continental soldier and won
the encounter. Only instead of aiming where it would not matter, of course Dorothy had to hit Lester on the jaw and practically ruin him for playing the saxophone. So Lester went to bed and stayed there for days, while Dorothy had to support him. And once a husband gets in the habit of being supported, his usefulness is practically over.
But the day after the quarrel, Dorothy received a cable from Charlie Breen, giving her the name of a lawyer named Abels and saying that he would foot all the bills for a divorce. So Dorothy went to Mr. Abels and told him her predicament. But it seems that Mr. Abels knew that Charlie was living on a small income that was all his family would allow.
And he knew that the Breen family would not be so delighted to have Dorothy get a divorce, for Mr. Abels is the kind of a lawyer that wealthy aristocratic people in New York sometimes make use of when their sons get into an affair of the heart with a girl beneath them. So he called up Mrs. Breen and asked her, and Mrs. Breen agreed, and said that she would even foot the larger bills if Mr. Abels would pretend to help Dorothy get a divorce, but
in reality, keep her within the bonds of matrimony at any cost. So then Mr. Abels started in to practice his profession, and he sent Charlie a cable saying, don't come back to America, trying all over again with Lester. Please don't cable me. It only makes trouble.
Signed, Dorothy. Well, Dorothy kept wondering why she did not hear again from Charlie. But Mr. Abels put her mind at rest by telling her that Mrs. Breen and Muriel Devenant had sailed for Europe and Charlie had decided to stay in Paris to meet them. And to prove it, he showed Dorothy quite a cool cablegram from Charlie which said, please
give Miss Shaw best wishes for happiness. We'll wait here for Mother and Muriel. Regards, Charles Breen. And Dorothy felt quite depressed because, after all, Charlie was the only friend she had that she could always count on no matter what she did to him.
Well, Mr. Abels told Dorothy that she could not make any real move until Lester had done something to her that was illegal in the state of New York, for the only thing a New Yorker can do illegally to his wife is to admire some girl on the outside. And as Lester had long ceased to admire Dorothy, Mr. Abels told her to leave him alone and it would only be a matter of time.
Well, Lester moved to a hotel and all of Dorothy's girlfriends spied on him, but he seemed to do nothing but lie in bed and read, for he never went back to work. And Dorothy did not know that Mr. Abels was paying Lester quite a little money to keep his marriage vows sacred. And time went on and went on and still Lester did not show any signs of giving her evidence,
for he only seemed to want to lie in bed with the Saturday evening post. But finally Mr. Abels began to have his troubles, because Lester began to wonder what good all that money was, when he was watched like a hawk and was not allowed to entertain socially without a third party in the shape of a detective looking on. So he began to get nervous, and then he would have words with Mr. Abels and show his ingratitude
and threaten to tell. Well, Mr. Abels knew it was not really ingratitude, but only the state of Lester's nerves. So he finally got an idea, and he sent for a nerve doctor he knew of to calm Lester down. And this nerve doctor gave Lester a diagnosis and prescribed the cocaine habit.
And that calmed him down. And from that moment Lester really began to be quite a comfort to Mr. Abels, because he developed into a regular homebody and never seemed to want to go out of his room. One day Dorothy was coming out of the theater after the matinee with Gloria when they met a boy they knew called Claude, who used to be in the chorus, but who had practically
ruined his whole career by a habit he developed of taking cocaine. Well, Claude was always standing outside the stage entrance to ask the girls for a small loan of a dollar. And when Dorothy saw him, she opened her pocketbook as usual. But much to her surprise, Claude said he did not need it because he said he was getting
all of the stuff that he wanted for nothing. And he was bubbling over with news. For he said to Dorothy, what do you think? I met your husband on Sixth Avenue, and he's developed into a user. Well, Dorothy was dumbfounded, for cocaine is quite expensive.
And if Lester was using it, Dorothy asked what was he using for money. So Claude said, dearie, he's scaly with it and living in ease on the fat of the land. Well, Dorothy naturally decided that Lester must have gone to work in the cocaine profession. But Claude said, don't be small-minded. He's too wealthy to work, and he's giving it away.
Well, then Dorothy made a remark about Lester that I can't even write down. And then Claude spoke up and said, he may have been that before, dearie, but now he's all charm. For it seems that Claude thought Lester had become more artistic. Well, after Claude went on his way, Gloria spoke up and told Dorothy that the cocaine
habit always seems to take away all a gentleman's interests in girls and that she would probably never get the evidence. And then Dorothy began to wonder. So then she and Gloria started in to put two and two together and came to a conclusion that Mr. Abels was back of everything and was not really Dorothy's friend at heart.
Well, Dorothy thought it would be quite a good idea to buy a revolver on Sixth Avenue and shoot him. But Gloria had an idea that was better, because she had practically made up her mind to get Jefferson Breen to give her a trip to Paris for a vacation. So she invited Dorothy to go along and get a Paris divorce and enjoy her revenge by thinking
of the idea that the Breen family money was footing the bills. End of chapter 11 End of chapter 11
