I awoke the next morning with the feeling that something or other was impending. I had no idea what it might be, pleasant or unpleasant. I felt a little the way you feel just before a race on which you have bet altogether too much money, a little excited, a little nervous, equally ready for laughter or anger. I had also the feeling that I had a great many things to do, and could not possibly get them done in so short a space of time as one day.
I hurried through breakfast. I hurried through the papers. And then I realized with a sense of anti-climax that until four o'clock, when I was to ride with Lucy, I had but one thing of any possible importance to do. And upon that business from first to last including the walk to the village and thence to the Club I spent no more than three-quarters of an hour. It had been an eccentric piece of business, and I was rather pleased with myself for having brought it to a satisfactory conclusion. But I wanted others to know what I had done and to be pleased with me for doing it; and to tell anyone was quite out of the question.
In the Club letter-box under "M," I saw a small gray envelope. Instinct told me that it was for me, and that it was from Lucy. Then somehow all my feeling of restlessness and suspense melted away like a lump of sugar in hot tea. I felt at once serene and comfortable.
I carried the note to a writing-table, for I imagined that it would require an immediate answer, and then read it. Like all Lucy's notes it began without the conventional endearment, and ended with initials. It contained also her usual half-dozen mistakes in spelling.
John says he has no money and can't get any. So we've got to close the house and go back north, and live very cheaply till better times. So I've got to begin packing. So I can't ride this afternoon. Isn't it all a beastly shame? But please drop in and say how-dy-do just the same, and don't mind if you have to sit on a trunk. And please be a little sorry because I'm going away and we can't have any more rides. And please don't say anything about this; because John isn't just himself and maybe when we get all packed up he'll change his mind.L. F.
Long before they were "all packed up," John did change his mind. I was present when he changed it. Lucy, Evelyn, and I were in the living-room helping each other to pack large silver-framed photographs into the tray of a trunk. It was slow work. During the winter none of us had looked at the photographs or commented on the originals, but now that they were to be swathed in tissue paper and put out of sight each one had to be approved or disapproved, and long excursions had to be made into the life histories and affairs of the friends who had sat for them.
Lucy had just taken a large photograph of Evelyn from the top of the low bookshelves that filled one end of the room when John came in from the garden with an open letter in his hand. He was smiling in a puzzled sort of way.
"What do you know about this!" he exclaimed rather than asked.
"Nothing," said Lucy, "yet." And she began to wrap Evelyn's photograph in many folds of tissue paper.
"Yesterday," said John, "I tried to get some money from the bank, but they turned me down. Now they write that upon reconsideration I can have anything I like."
Well, Lucy's expression at that moment was worth a great deal more than the few thousands which her husband would see fit to borrow from the bank, and I couldn't but feel that there are moments when it is really worth while to be alive and rich.
"Wonder what made 'em change their minds?" said John.
"There's one thing sure," said Lucy. "You are not to look a gift horse in the mouth."
She unwrapped the photograph of Evelyn and put it back in its old place on top of the bookshelves.
"This settles everything, does it?" asked John. "We don't go back to New York?"
"We do not," said Lucy firmly.
"Well," said John, "I'd better see the bank before it changes its mind again. Is the buggy outside?"
"No, but you can take Archie's or Evelyn's. Can't he? I sent Cornelius Twombly to do some chores."
"I'll drive you down," said Evelyn, "having a telegram to send."
"And I'll stay and help Lucy unpack," I said. "Lord, people, I'm glad you're not going!"
The moment we were alone Lucy said: "You did it."
"Did what?"
"Don't beat about the bush! Don't pretend that you are not a blessed angel in disguise!"
Her face was very grave and lovely.
"It's the kindest, tactfulest thing that anybody ever did."
"I couldn't bear the thought of your going back to the city when it's such fun here."
"What can I say or do to thank you?"
"Nothing, Lucy. Yes, you can. You can ride with me this afternoon."
She looked a little troubled. "Last night, after you had gone," she said, "John said, 'Aren't you seeing a good deal of Archie Mannering?'"
For a moment I felt distinctly chilled and uncomfortable. Then I said: "Oh, dear! Now Brutus himself is beginning to worry about us. How silly!"
"How silly!" echoed Lucy, and we stood staring at each other rather vapidly, finding nothing to say.
After a while I asked if John had said any more on the subject. "Did he embroider the theme at all?" I asked.
Lucy took a photograph out of the trunk tray and began to unwrap it. "Yes," she said. "He did. He even held forth. He said that when a woman no longer cared for her husband, it was dangerous for her to see much of another man. He realized, he said, that ours was an exceptional case, but that soon people would guess abouthimand me, and that then they'd begin to talk aboutyouand me. And he hates anything conspicuous, and so forth, and so forth."
"What did you say?"
She smiled up at me, but not very joyously. "I said, 'I'm not going to be rude to one of the best friends I've got, just for fun. If you forbid me to see him, why I suppose I'll obey you, but I'd have to explain to him, wouldn't I? I'd have to say, "John considers our friendship dangerous, so we're not to see each other any more!"' And of course he said that that was out of the question, and I agreed with him."
"Still you've said it."
And we smiled at each other.
"He didn't give me a good character," said Lucy dolefully. "He said I never think of yesterday or tomorrow, but only of the moment. He said I neglect the children, and Oh, I'd like to end it all! It's an impossible situation. I'd give my life gladly to feel about him the way I used to, but I can't—I can't ever."
She looked very tragic.
"Oh," she went on vehemently, "it's terrible. I'm all cold and dumb. Every power of affection that I had has gone out like a candle. Idoneglect the children! It's because I can't look them in the face. I've failed him, and I've failed them, and I ought to tie a stone round my neck and jump into the nearest millpond."
"It's a good three miles to the nearest millpond," I said. "And there isn't a stone in this part of South Carolina. You are all up in the air now, because the situation you are in is so new to you. But you'll get used to it."
"If I don't go mad first."
"Why, Lucy?"
"You don't understand," she cried. "You have never had loving arms to go to when you were in trouble. I've had them and I've lost them. I mean I've lost the power to go to them and find comfort."
A picture of her running to my arms for comfort flashed through my mind, and troubled me to the marrow. And I had from that moment the definite wish to take her in my arms. And in that same moment I realized that those who thought we were too much together were not such meddling fools as I had thought them.
"Lucy," I said, and I hardly recognized my own voice. "Whatever happens, you've a friend who will never fail you."
"I know that," she said, and she held out her two hands, and I took them in mine.
"If you sent for me to the ends of the earth, I would come."
"I know that."
"There is nothing you could ask of me that I wouldn't give."
"I know that."
And that afternoon we rode together in the woods.
A man must have descended to the very deepest levels of depression before he loses his power to laugh, or to be cheered by an unexpected bettering of his financial position. John Fulton was in a bad way, but certain things still struck him as funny, and the money which he had been enabled to borrow from the bank had eased his mind. Still, so Lucy told me, he could not sleep at night, and it must have been obvious to the most casual observer that he was a sick man. He had a drawn and hungry look. Jock and Hurry could by no means satisfy his appetite for affection. Indeed, I think the sight and touch and the sounds of them at play were no great comfort to him at this time. He must have felt in their presence something of that anguish of pity which a man feels for children who have lost their mother.
He had hoped at first that Lucy's failure of affection was but a temporary aberration. But at last he must have come to despair of any change in her feelings for him, at least under existing conditions. Indeed their relations were going from bad to worse. A man loved and beloved falls into habits of passion for which there is no cure but death or old age. Yet a man would readily believe that separation might affect him like an opiate, and it must have been in this belief that Fulton determined to accompany Harry Colemain on a trip to Palm Beach. To me he vouchsafed the explanation that he was not well and that he couldn't sleep, and that when he wasn't well, and that when he couldn't sleep, his one thought and desire was to get to salt water. "It always cures me," he said, just as if he had often been sick before. From Lucy I had the truth of the matter.
"He thinks," she said, "that if he goes away and stays away for a long time that perhaps I will miss him enough to want him back, and on the old footing. He isn't even going to write to me. It's going to be exactly as if he didn't exist."
"Do you think it wise for him to go, Lucy?"
"Perhaps it will do him good. It won't change me. I know that. If only he'd change. Haven't I done him enough harm to make him hate me? Archie, I'm so sorry for him that I wish I was dead. And yet I want to live. I'm too young to die. I want to live, and be happy—happy the way I used to be happy."
"And you can't with John?"
She shook her head quietly. "It's the most wonderful thing to be in love!" she said. "I wonder what I did to have that wonderful thing? I wonder what I've done to deserve to lose it? And even if—even if it happened again it could never be the same. There can be only one first time—even if you've got a silly memory that doesn't remember very well. And you make ties and habits and all these have to be thrown overboard when the second time happens, and there's scandal, and cold shoulders, and—what do you think Ioughtto do? If I can't give him what he's paying for oughtn't I to cut loose on my own, to support myself, and not be a burden to him and a ubiquitous reminder that we've failed to make a go of living together? WhatoughtI to do?"
It had become very hard for me to tell her what I thought she ought to do. Ever since that moment when I had first known that I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her, I had begun to have doubts of my own honesty. And now she had put that honesty to a definite test, and I was determined that it should come through the ordeal alive.
"Must I really tell you what I think you ought to do?"
"Yes."
"Some of the things I think you ought to do, are things that I know you don't want to do—things that you think perhaps youcan'tdo. Women often saycan'twhen they meanwon't, don't they?"
"Maybe."
"I'm afraid you aren't going to like what I'm going to say, nor me for saying it."
"Try me," she said, and she gave me a look of great trust and understanding.
"I'm going to tell you what I think you ought to do, Lucy, and what I think you ought to have done."
Any teacher whose scholars looked at him with the trustfulness and expectation with which Lucy now looked at me, must be inspired, I think, to the very top notch of his sense of honor and duty. I am sure at least that I laid the law down of what I thought she should do, and should have done with complete honesty and without regard to consequences. If I got nothing better for my pains than dislike, at least I could criticize her conduct and character without being biased by my growing affection for her.
"In the first place," I said, "when you found out that you no longer loved your husband, you made your first mistake. By your own admission he had given you everything in the way of devotion and faithfulness that a man can give a woman. When you found that you no longer loved him, you shouldn't have told him. He ought never to have known. You should have summoned all your fortitude and delicacy to deceive him into thinking that you had not changed toward him, and never would."
"Icouldn't!" exclaimed Lucy.
"You wouldn't," I said.
"It wouldn't have been honest."
"Perhaps not. But it would have been noble."
Lucy naturally enough preferred praise to blame, and this showed in her face and in her voice. I felt infinitely removed from our previous terms of intimate confidence, when she said: "Couldn't or wouldn't, it's history that I didn't."
"That being so," I said, "I think you should go now to your husband and tell him that love or no love you propose to be his faithful wife till death part you; to put him first in your head, if not in your heart. It may be that through a long course of simulation you will come once more to care for him. Self-sacrifice is a noble weapon. I think, Lucy, that you would be very wise if you told him that two is not a lucky number."
"I don't understand."
"Jock and Hurry," I said, "are two."
She changed color to the roots of her hair. "Oh," she cried, "you don't understand how a woman feels about that! I'd rather die. I—Icouldn't!"
"Youwon't."
"I thoughtyouunderstood me better. I thoughtyouwanted me to be happy!"
"Upon my soul, Lucy, I think that you might find happiness that way."
She shrugged her shoulders and her face looked hard as marble. "And that's your advice!" she said. And then with a sudden change of expression, "It's what you think Ioughtto do. Would it please you if I took your advice? Is it what youwantme to do?"
I had spoken as I thought duty commanded. It hadn't been easy. With each word I felt that I had lost ground in her estimation. She asked that last question with the expression of a weary woebegone child, and I answered it without thought, and upon the urge of a wrong impulse.
"No—no," I cried. "It's not what I want you to do. I had almost rather see you dead."
There was a long silence.
"Do you mean that?"
"Yes, Lucy. Yes."
"Then youdocare. Oh, thank God!"
I don't know how she got there. It was as if I had waked up and found her in my arms.
Kissed and kissing, we heard the opening of the distant front door. And Oh, how I wish I had found the courage when Fulton came into the livingroom, to tell him that I loved his wife, and that she loved me, and what was he going to do about it! I did have the impulse, but not the courage. When Fulton came in Lucy was knitting at an interminable green necktie, and I was talking to her from a far chair across an open number of the illustratedLondon News. We looked, I believe, as casual and innocent as cherubim, but my conscience was very guilty, and it seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, that for the first time Fulton showed me a certain curtness of manner, as if he was not pleased at finding me so often in his house.
With the knowledge that I loved Lucy and that she loved me, came also the knowledge that for a long time the situation had been inevitable—inevitable if we kept on being so much in each other's company. Passages between us of words and looks now recurred to my memory filled with portentous meaning. Oh, I thought, how could I have been so blind! A fool must have seen it coming. I ought to have seen it coming. I ought to have run from it as a man runs from a conflagration. When Lucy told me that she no longer loved her husband I ought to have known that the fault was mine, and I ought to have gone to a far place, and left that little family to rehabilitate itself in peace. Surely after a "blank" spell Lucy would have loved her husband again.
But all the thoughts that I carried to bed with me that night were not dark with remorse. It was possible for whole minutes of time, especially between sleeping and waking, to forget the complications of the situation and to bask in the blissful warmth of its serenities. The laughter, the prayers, the adoration of Lucy's lovely eyes were mine now. She loved me better than her children, better than life itself. She had not said these things to me, she had looked them to me. It was wonderful to feel that I had been trusted with so much that was beautiful and precious.
Once a spoiled child, always a spoiled child. In the scheme of things Iwouldnot at first give their proper place to those awful barriers which society has set up between a man and another man's wife. We loved each other with might and main, and our only happiness could be in passing over those barriers and belonging to each other. John Fulton and his children were but vague pale shadows across the sunshine.
The sleep that I got that night, short though it was, was infinitely refreshing. I waked with the feeling that happiness had at last come into my life, and that I was not thirty-five years old, but twenty years young.
I walked in my mother's garden waiting for servants to come downstairs and make coffee for me and poach eggs. It was going to be a lovely day. Already the sun had coaxed the tea-olives to give out their odor of ripe peaches. "How she loves them," I thought. "If only she were with me now."
The garden seemed very beautiful to me. For the first time in my life, I think, I took a flower in my hands and examined it to see how it was made. A great and new curiosity filled me. How beautiful the world was, and all things in it; how short the time to find out all that there was to be known about all those beautiful things! And what an ignoble basis of ignorance I must start from if I was to "find out," and to "understand!" There filled me a sense of unworthiness and a strong desire for self-improvement.
"I must learn the names of some of these things," I thought, and I began to read the labels which stood among the flowers and shrubbery, for in such matters my mother was very strict and particular:Abeleia grandiflora, Laurestinus, Olea fragrans, Ligustrum napalense, Rosa watsoniana—— Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer. Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions of buds no bigger than the eggs in a shad roe. Yes, it was a rose. I looked at the drop of blood on the ball of my thumb, and thought what a beautiful color it was, and how gladly, if need be, I would shed every drop of it for Her.
Dark smoke began to pour from the kitchen chimney, and I knew that the cook was down. Hilda must have seen me in the garden, for she was setting a place for me at one end of the big dining-table. How fresh and clean she always looked and how tidy. Almost you might have thought that her hair was carved from some rich brown substance. It was always as neat as the hair of a statue.
"Good morning, Hilda."
"Good morning, Mr. Archie."
"How about breakfast?"
"It will be ready directly."
"Wish you'd give me a long glass of Apollinaris with a lot of ice in it."
"With pleasure."
I heard her pounding ice in the pantry and then the pop as the bottle came open. She stood behind my chair while I drank. And somehow I got the feeling that she was smiling. I turned my head quickly. She was smiling, but tremulously, almost as if she was going to cry.
"What's the matter, Hilda—have I forgotten to brush the back of my hair?"
"No, sir—it's——"
"It'swhat?"
"Nothing, sir—only——"
"Don't be silly—— Tell me."
She told me, and for a moment, so odd was her statement, I thought she must have gone out of her mind.
"The window of my room," she said, "is just over one of the windows of yours."
I didn't know what to say. I really thought she must be slightly deranged. I said lamely: "Which window?"
"The one by your bed, the one you always leave open so's the air can get to you."
"Well, Hilda, what about it?"
"Sometimes I hear you talking in your sleep, and then I lean out of my window and listen."
With this admission she blushed crimson and no longer looked me in the eyes.
"Do you think that's quite fair?"
"I don't lead a very full life, Mr. Archie."
"And my unconscious prattle helps to fill it? Do I often talk in my sleep?"
"You talked last night."
Her voice was full of meaning and somehow I felt chilled and no longer so very gay and happy.
"What did I talk about?"
"About a lady."
With humiliation I realized that I was now turning red; but I laughed, and said: "We look like a couple of boiled lobsters, Hilda. What did I say about the lady?"
"You said—I only thought you ought to know that I know—so's—well so's you can keep that window shut, and fix it so no one else will know."
I felt like a convicted criminal.
"Did I—mention the lady's name?"
She nodded. "You were talking about Mrs. Fulton," she said in a low voice, "only you didn't call her that."
"Hilda," I said firmly. "Mrs. Fulton and I are very old friends—nothing more."
I could see that she didn't believe me, and I changed my tactics. "You'll not talk, Hilda?"
Her face had resumed its natural color, and she now looked me once more in the eyes. "I'd sooner die than hurt you, Mr. Archie."
"Why, Hilda——!"
All this time I had been sitting and talking over my shoulder, but now I got quickly out of my chair, and drew her hands away from her face. "Oh, Hilda, Iamso sorry. WhatcanI do? I'm so sorry, Hilda, and so proud, too."
She looked up at that.
"You poor child! I feel like a dog, a miserable dog!"
"You couldn't help it, Mr. Archie. You can't help being you. Can you?"
She tried to smile.
"How long," I asked, "has it been like this?"
"Ever since the day I came—three years and two hundred and twenty-one days ago—and I heard you say to Mrs. Mannering—to your mother—'Mother,' you said, 'that new maid is as pretty as a picture.' And that did it!"
"Hilda," I said as quietly as I could, "I'm more touched and flattered than I can express. I'll be a good friend to you as long as I live. But—I think I ought to say it, even if it's a cold rough thing to say. I don't believe I'm ever going to feel the same way about you, and so——"
"Oh, I know that, but—— Oh, do you still think I'm pretty?"
"IndeedI do. I've always thought that. Always known that."
"Well," she said, speaking very bravely but with a mouth that quivered, "that's something. I don't lead a very full life, but that's something."
"Mother, are you very busy with those letters?"
"Yes, dear, very."
"I thought so; so put them down and come into the garden. There is a bench where the thyme and eglantine——"
"My dear, you frighten me. What has happened?"
My mother rose, one hand on her bosom.
"Nothing to be frightened about. It's only a little tragedy in a life that isn't very full. Come and talk it over."
I gave her my arm and we strolled into the garden like a pair of lovers.
"Do you remember when Hilda came to us?"
"Perfectly."
"I said to you on that day, 'Mother, the new maid is as pretty as a picture.' Do you remember?"
"No."
"Well, I said it, and Hilda heard me say it, and please don't laugh, it seems that my saying it made the poor child—Oh, care about me. She's cared ever since, and I'm afraid she cares a whole lot."
"How did you get to know?"
"She told me, this morning, practically out of a clear sky. One thing I want to make clear is that it's just as little my fault as it possibly can be. I feel like the devil about it, but I can't for the life of me find one little hook to hang a shred of self-reproach on. My morals aren't what they should be. But I am a fastidious man, and the roof under which my mother lives is to me as the roof of a temple. But you know all this. Now what's to be done? One thing is clear, I can't and won't be amorously waited on. I think the poor child will have to be sent away."
"Oh, dear!" cried my mother, "and just when she's getting to be a perfect servant, and your father so used to her now—says he never knows when she's in the room and when she isn't."
We returned to the house.
"I'll talk it over with her," announced my mother, "and try to decide what's best—best for her, the poor, pretty little thing."
You may be sure that that meeting in the little room where my mother wrote her letters was no meeting between a mistress and a servant, but between two honest women who in different ways loved the same man.
I was with Lucy while it took place, but certain gists of what was said and done have come to me, some from my mother, and some from Hilda.
My mother, it seemed, waived at once all those degrees of the social scale which separated them, took Hilda in her arms, kissed her, and held her while Hilda had what women call a "good cry." My mother is too proud and brave to cry, but she was unhappy without affectation. After the embrace and the cry they sat side by side on a little brocaded sofa and talked. My mother fortunately did not have to point out the social obstacles in the way of a match between Hilda and me, as there was never any question of such a match. Indeed, in the talk between them I was not at first mentioned. My mother took the position that Hilda was just a sweet, nice-minded girl who was very unhappy and needed comforting, and advice. First she made Hilda tell the story of her life. To be permitted to do this in the presence of a sincere listener and well-wisher is one of the greatest comforts to anyone.
"The poor child," said my mother, "has had such a drab, colorless, unhappy life that it made her almost happy to tell about it."
It seemed that Hilda wasn't "anybody" even for a servant. Her earliest recollections were of life in an English orphanage—one of those orphanages where the mothers of the orphans are still alive and there never were any fathers.
"But she's made herself think," my mother told me, "that her father was a gentleman—God save the mark!"
Well, she went into service when she was a "great" girl of fourteen or fifteen, and after various drab adventures in servitude came to this country and was presently sent to my mother on approval. She had left her last place in England because of a horrible butler. He was bowlegged and very old. He drank and made the poor frightened girls in the house listen to horrible stories. One found notes, printed notes, pinned on one's pincushion. "Have a heart. Don't lock your door tonight," and such like. Or a piece of plate would be missed and one would find it in one's bureau drawer, where the horrible old man had put it, and one dared not complain to the master lest upon carefully planned circumstantial evidence one be made out to be a thief.
It had been so wonderful coming to live in my mother's house. The servants were so different, so kind, so worthy. The servants' rooms were so clean and neat and well-furnished as the master's rooms. So much was done to make the servants comfortable and happy. Nobody had ever spoken crossly to one in my mother's house——"And, Oh, Mrs. Mannering, I feel so low and ashamed to have made so much trouble for you and Mr. Archie."
That was the first mention of my name.
"My dear Hilda, you mustn't feel ashamed because you've had a romance."
"Oh, it has been a sort of romance, hasn't it, Mrs. Mannering? But I never—never should have let it all come out. Because now I'll have to go away, and never even see him ever any more. I never should have let it come out, but I couldn't help it. And him always so kind and polite, and never once guessing all these years!"
Now my mother had not gone into that interview without a definite plan. She had heard that the Fultons—of all the people in this world whom it might have been!—were being abandoned by their waitress, and already by a brisk use of the telephone my mother had secured the place for Hilda.
It's a wonder that Hilda did not burst out laughing or screaming when she heard into whose service she was to go. I don't think she hated Lucy—yet. But for a woman who loved a man to take a place with the woman the man loved must have struck her as the most grotesque of propositions. But what could she do? Loyal to me, and to my secret, she wasn't going to give me away to my mother.
"But," she protested, "Mr. Archie goes so much to that house!"
"But now," said my mother, "don't you see, he won't go so much."
Indeed the dear manager felt that she had killed two birds with one stone. Lucy had a good place, and from now on there would be in the Fultons' house a living reason why a man of tact (like her beloved son!) should keep away. Alas, mother, there were other living reasons in that house which should have served to keep me away, and didn't.
I heard from my mother of the arrangement and was troubled. For once in her life of smoothing out other people's lives she had blundered seriously. Her measures had in them only this of success: that I found many excuses for not taking meals in the Fultons' house, and from that time forward saw Hilda very seldom. My mother gave her a lot of clothes, and quite a lot of money, I suppose, and the poor child for a while dropped out of sight. But not out of mind, I can tell you; for it worried me sick to feel that she was always in Lucy's house, watching and listening when she could.
I had not at this time had any great experience with the passion of jealousy. But a man who reads the newspapers, or has done his turn at jury duty in Criminal Sessions, cannot be ignorant of the desperate acts to which now and again it drives men and women.
Hilda, according to the slight knowledge I had of her character, was gentle and patient; she would be treated by Lucy as all Lucy's servants were, with the greatest tact and friendliness, and still the mere fact of her presence in that house filled me with forebodings. She would be in a position to make so much trouble, if ever anything should happen to start her on the war path. She had proved already that her moral nature was not superior to eavesdropping; already she had my secret by the ears, and one-sided and innocent though that secret may have appeared to her, it was not really a one-sided secret, and when she had got her clutch upon the other side, she could be almost as dangerous and mischievous as you please.
At best, Hilda was one more difficulty with which Lucy and I would have to contend.
It would have been wisest to tell Lucy all that I knew about Hilda. But you may have noticed with butterflies that they do not fly the straight line between two points; rather they fly in circles, with back-tracking, excursions, and gyrations, so that unless you have seen them start you cannot guess where they have started from, nor until the wings close and the insects come to a definite rest, are you in a position to know what their objective was.
In the face of our recently declared love for each other, any mention of Hilda's below-stairs passion for the "young master" seemed to me a blatant indelicacy. Almost it might have a quality of pluming and boasting, a gross acceptance of man's polygamous potentialities.
There would be time later for conversations in which future practicalities should take precedence over romantic fancies and protestations. Just now the Butterfly did not care a rap what should happen when winter came; for the present the world was filled with flowers—all his, and all containing honey.
"He broke up their home," is a familiar phrase. But few men in the act of breaking up a home realize the gravity of what they are about. I had gone a long way toward breaking up Fulton's happy family life without having the slightest notion that I was doing anything of the kind. When Lucy fell out of love with her husband, it was not because she had fallen in love with me. It was because she was going to. The lovely little sloop-of-war was merely clearing her decks for action. She didn't know this; I didn't. I frequented the house a little more than other men; that was all. And I frequented it not because of the charm exercised upon me by an individual member of the Fulton family, but of the charm which it exercised upon me as a whole.Therewas peace,therewas happiness,therewas love and understanding; there was poignant food for a lonely bachelor to chew upon. Remembering this how can I believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that everything in it is for the best? If I had not been fascinated by the Fultons as a family, I should never have become a frequenter of their house. If I had not been a frequenter of their house, I should never have split that family which as a whole so fascinated me with a wedge of tragedy. It is a horrid circle of thought.
When I learned that Lucy no longer loved her husband my heart had given no guilty bound of anticipation; instead it had turned lead-heavy for sheer sorrowing and sunk into my boots. The other day the Germans smashed the blue glass in Rheims Cathedral. A friend brought me a little fragment of this, and among my personal possessions I give it the place of first treasure. It's a more wonderful blue than Lucy's eyes, even. The light of heaven has poured through it to illumine the face of Joan of Arc. Its price is far above rubies and sapphires, and it seems to me the most wonderful treasure to have for my very own. But does this fact automatically make me glad that the Germans banged the great cathedral to pieces? It does not. Sometimes when I look at the light through my piece of blue glass I see red. And I hope that those who trained guns against the holy shrine and who are not already in hell, soon will be. And I could wish myself the hell of never having known Lucy's love, if by so doing I could restore the Fulton family to the blessed and tranquil state in which I first knew them.
I began this chapter with an idea of self-defense. How much of the tragedy am I responsible for? Upon my soul I can never answer that question to my satisfaction, and my conscience has put it to me thousands of times. I ought to have seen it coming. I didn't—at least I'm very sure that I didn't. But sometimes I am not so very sure of this. It is so obvious (now) that I ought to have seen it coming, that sometimes I persuade myself that I actually did. But how could I? For if I had, with any certainty at all, surely I would have been man enough to hide myself away somewhere, even at the ends of the earth. Love does not grow and wax great upon air. Solid food is needed in the occasional presence of the beloved. Suppose I had fled away the moment I learned that Lucy no longer loved her husband? Already her heart must have been turning to me, if only a little, but with the magnet which had caused it to turn that little removed from sight, first, and presently from mind, I believe that after a dazed numbed period that heart of hers might have swung back into its place.
Later when Fulton said to me, "But you ought to have seen it coming, and taken measures to see that it didn't come," I gave him my word that I hadn't seen it coming, and it was very obvious that he didn't believe me. Will anyone believe me? It doesn't matter. I am not even sure myself that I am telling the truth. But I know that I am trying to.
I had left my mother to her interview with Hilda, and betaken myself to the club. It was too early even to hope for a sight of Lucy. There were a number of men in the reading-room discussing the morning leader in that fair-minded and pithy sheet, theCharleston News and Courier, and one of these, eyeing me with a quizzical expression, said: "You look as if you had won a bet."
So alreadyitshowed in my face.
Well, I felt as if I had won many bets, and was only twenty, and that the course before me was all plain sailing. I was not yet in a condition to argue with myself about right and wrong. It did not seem worth while to look into the serried faces of difficulties and think how I could burst through them. It was more natural on that first morning after the discovery to look boldly over their heads to the rich open and peaceful country beyond.
A line from the "Brushwood Boy" kept occurring to me, "But what shall I do when I see you in the light?"
What should I do, what would Lucy do? Would there be people about or would we have the good luck to meet alone? Did she still love me, or had the dark night brought council and a change of heart? I knew that it hadn't. We were as definitely engaged to each other as if there was no husband in the way, no children, no law, no convention, no nothing. I was idiotically happy.
One thing only troubled me a little. Had Lucy's impulse to precipitate frankness already started any machinery of opposition into action? Had she told her husband? Knowing her so intimately, I could not make up my mind, but would have been inclined to take either end of the bet.
Suppose she had told him?
Wouldn't she give me a word of warning so that I could be prepared for anything he might say to me at our first meeting? I thought so, but could not be sure.
"If he does know," I thought, "I don't want to see him. Why don't I want to see him? Am I afraid of him? I am not afraid of him physically. I am stronger than he and more skillful, and I am not afraid of him mentally. He has a better mind than I have, but that is nothing to be afraid of. Well, then, why don't I want to see him? Oh, because it will be awkward and disagreeable; because he will look sick to death and irreparably injured. Because he will not do me justice, because he will think it is all my fault; and because he will require of me things which I shall not promise him."
I heard the telephone ringing in the distance. My heart bounded and I knew that Lucy was asking for me. I had risen and half crossed the room to meet the boy who came to tell me that I was indeed wanted on the phone. My heart began to thump in my breast, like a trunk falling downstairs. I glanced guiltily to see if the rumpus it seemed to me to be making was attracting notice. No. Every man was sunk in his newspaper. A moment later, I heard her voice in my ear.
"Listen, I'd like to see you. I'll be dressed and downstairs in ten minutes. Evelyn and John have driven to the golf club to get John's sticks. He's really going to Palm Beach. They start sometime soon after lunch.… How do I feel?… Oh, about the same as yesterday!"
I cannot describe the thrill or emotion which I managed to abstract from that last phrase. About the same as yesterday! I, too, felt like that, only more so.
"Good-by—for ten minutes."
She hung up suddenly. But I could not at once leave the telephone room. It seemed to me that I must be visibly trembling from head to foot.
My buggy was at the club door. First I drove home, raced up the stairs to my room, and from a closet in which I keep all sorts of hunting and fishing gear, snatched a fine deep-sea rod by Hardy of London, and a big pigskin box of tackle. I remembered to have heard John Fulton say that he had none of such things with him in Aiken, and I thought they might come in handy for him at Palm Beach. I cannot quite explain why it was, but I had the sudden desire to load the man with favors and presents.
It was only on the way to his house that the rod and the tackle-box struck me as an excellent excuse for so early a morning call. I left them on the table in the front hall, and marched boldly through the house, and unannounced into the living-room.
Of all the Lucy that turned swiftly from a window at the sound of my steps, and hurried to meet me, I saw only the great blue eyes.
She came into my arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to do, as if they had always been her comfort and her refuge. She was calm and fresh as a rose in the early morning. I could feel her heart beating tranquilly against mine. It seemed to me that the essence of every sweetest flower in the world had been used in her making. I felt that she was the most precious and defenseless thing in creation, and that me alone she trusted to cherish her and to defend her. It could not but be right to hold her thus closer and closer and to learn that her heart beat no longer tranquilly, but with a fluttering throbbing quickness like the heart of a wild bird that you have caught and hold in your hand.
All this while my lips were pressed to hers and hers to mine. Then from the playground door rose in lamentation over some tragic-seeming mishap of play, the voice of Hurry.
Our kiss ended upon the shrill note of woe and protest. But still we looked each other in the eyes, and she said: "What are we going to do about it?"