Free The Friend of Women and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss Page A

now joined, not only between owner and editor in chief, but between husband and wife. But it made her tone firmer.
    â€œWe need writers who would be just as glad to find the rumor of a scandal baseless as to find it authenticated. That is not true of your man.”
    â€œMy man!”
    â€œYour candidate, then.”
    â€œYou mean that we should take a vote, the six of us?”
    â€œWe could start that way.”
    â€œAnd if the vote goes against you, you will exercise your veto?”
    â€œIf I see no other way to safeguard the integrity of the magazine.”
    â€œ
The
magazine? You mean
your
magazine.”
    â€œIf you must put it that way, yes.”
    â€œIs there any other way to put it?” Eliot rose now from his chair. “Gentlemen, I hereby resign my editorship. I leave you to your boss.” And he strode quickly from the room.
    â€œLet us call it a day, my friends,” Letty said to the others. “Obviously, I have a lot to think over.”
    In the days that followed, Eliot refused even to speak to Letty. He hung about the apartment, pale, tense, and moody. And then one morning after breakfasting alone, he departed, leaving a note instructing their housekeeper to send his clothes to his club. His two little daughters said nothing about all this. They were accustomed to their father’s mood changes and frequent departures.
    Letty had no idea as to what he would do next. She had long been used to his periodic depressions. It would not be wholly surprising if he suddenly returned, without a word of apology or explanation, and took up their life together as if nothing had happened. Or if, returning, he simply for a month or so remained sulkily in the apartment, silent, restless, unable to work, occasionally engaging in some mindless manual activity like polishing his leather-bound books with a special oil. But as his absence became prolonged without a word from him, she had to prepare herself for a graver course of conduct.
    And then one morning a dreadful letter was hand delivered to her doorman.
    â€œLike your father before you, you are a dangerous predator. You’re like the desert wasp who devours the unconscious spider she has paralyzed with her
sting.
She can feed herself only with living flesh. I had the wit, the imagination, the genius you needed for your enterprises. I had to be caught, but I had to be caught alive. And now that I’ve begun to awaken, you have to sting me again. But you may not be able to catch me again. And watch out. The spider, now alert, may prove more than the equal of the wasp.”
    Letty wondered if he might not be suffering from a sort of dementia. There had been moments when she had been afraid that his depression might have pushed him temporarily over the edges of sanity. But before consulting a doctor, she decided to appeal to her old friend and mentor for guidance.
    ***
    It was over a long lunch that Letty told me the sad story of Eliot’s deterioration. She was fearsome that in one of his increasingly violent fits of manic depression he might actually do himself in. It seemed to me more likely that he would blurt out to the world—or to anyone who would listen—the sorry tale of how he had mistreated my three dear girls. Of course, there was always the hope that if he waxed mad enough, no one would believe him. But I could not persuade myself that Letty wouldn’t believe him when he boasted what he had done with her two friends. There had to be some way to stop him.
    After an afternoon of silent and solitary brooding on a Central Park bench, I decided to approach Eliot directly. He and I were both members of the Patroons Club, where I knew he was now staying, and at six o’clock I went to its bar, suspecting that he might be an early visitor. And indeed he came, before its usual customers, and, spotting me, he invited me—surprisingly—to join him at an unoccupied corner table. I could only surmise that