haven’t you, Robert? You took care of her, didn’t you? I’m much obliged to you…. You son of a bitch,” he added quietly and slowly, and with an accent of infinite loathing.
No one spoke, and after gazing at his wife a moment longer with this same air of evil quietness, he said, in a tone of mock surprise: “Why, what’s the matter? You don’t look a bit glad to see me, darling. Most men’s wives would be wild about a husband who flew across the country in an aeroplane to see them, most women would be crazy about that.”
“I wish,” the girl said bitterly, “that you had fallen into a river and drowned.”
“Now, is that nice? Is that kind?” said Upshaw in a tone of grieved reproach.
He turned toward Eugene and spoke to him for the first time…. “Now, I leave it to you, Mr.—” he hesitated, “I didn’t catch your name, sir, but is it all right if I call you Mr. Whipple?”
“Yes,” Eugene said. “It’s all right.”
“Good!” he cried. “I knew it would be. The reason I say that is I used to have a friend out in Cleveland named Charley Whipple, who was just the same type of fellow that you are—you know,” he said quietly and sneeringly, “a fine clean-cut fellow, eyes glowing with health, beautiful complexion, broad-shouldered, both feet on the ground, good to his mother.—Oh! he was a prince!—Just the same sort of looking fellow you are—so you won’t mind if I call you by his name, will you? You remind me so much of him. Well, now, Mr. Whipple, I ask you if you think it’s nice for a man’s wife to talk to him like this? Is it kind? Is it fair?”
“She’s not your wife,” said Robert. “She’s my wife.”
For the first time Upshaw turned and faced his enemy squarely: he surveyed him slowly, up and down, with eyes which burned and glittered with their hatred. “Did you say something?” he asked.
“You heard me,” said Robert.
“Did anyone speak to you? Did anyone say anything to you?” Upshaw whispered. He was silent a moment; then he leaned forward slightly over the table. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “The only pity about this is that you’re not going to be able to use it.—But I’m going to give it to you, anyway: here it is—Don’t fool with a dying man, Robert. If you’re going to play around with anyone, play around with the living, and not with the dead. Dead men are bad people to play around with.”
