Near the Fultons, fronting on the street, is a large overgrown yard that has never been built on. Here in the shadow of a great cedar tree I waited and watched for Hilda. On the stroke of ten I saw her coming. She had a neat, brave, brisk way of walking, her head well up, as if she was afraid of nothing. A few moments later I hailed her from under my cedar, and after glancing up and down the street to see if anyone was watching, she joined me there.
It was very dark. I could just make out her face. She was breathing fast and had one hand pressed upon her heart.
"Thank you for coming, Hilda. You saw Mrs. Fulton and me in the hall?"
"And heard you."
"I'm throwing myself on your mercy, Hilda. Mrs. Fulton and I love each other. When we get back to New York we are going to tell Mr. Fulton. He will let Mrs. Fulton divorce him, and then we are to be married. You'll be my friend, won't you, and not tell? There's been nothing wrong, Hilda——"
"Only kisses."
"But if he found out from anyone but Mrs. Fulton—you see he isn't very well and he might do something crazy—something tragic. You see if you told him what you'd seen, he might act before anyone had a chance to explain."
I was trying to make the matter sound more serious than I felt it to be. Whatever happened, I did not think that Fulton was the kind of man who forgets his education and his civilization, but I wanted, if I could, to frighten Hilda into secrecy.
"You'd not want to get me all shot up, would you, Hilda?"
She was silent for a time, as if weighing pros and cons in her head. Then she looked up at me and said:
"WhenIsaw,Ididn't do anything crazy."
"Hilda," I said, "he has to be hurt and you have to be hurt. That's always been the way with love—it always will be."
She was silent again. Then she said in a low voice that carried with it a certain power to thrill: "He'd die for her. And I'd die for you. But he's only a worn-out glove, and I'm only a common servant. She thinks she'd die for you, and you think you'd die for her. But you're both wrong. A woman that won't stand by her babies isn't going to die for anyone, not if she knows it. A man that gets to your age without marrying any of the women he's gone with isn't going to die for anyone if he can help it. Wait till you've crossed her selfish will a few times and see how much she'll die for you; wait till she begins to use you the way she used him. A whole lot you'll want to die for—her—then——"
"I can't listen to this, Hilda."
"Youwilllisten, or else I'll scream and say you attacked me—a whole lot she'll feel like dying for youthen. Servants have eyes and ears and hearts. There's servants in that house that know how things used to be, who see how things are now, since you came philandering around. And do you know what those servants think of her, and what I think of her for the way she's treated him? Oh, they like her well enough because she's gentle and easy-going, and good-tempered and easy to get on with; but there isn't a servant in that house would change characters with her. We think she's the kind of woman that's beneath contempt—lazy, selfish, spendthrift—always pampering number one—and going about the world looking like a sad, bruised lily. Do you think the servants in that house don't know all about your goings and comings, and the life you've led, the harm you've done and didn't have to do, the good you might have done, and didn't?"
"But, Hilda——"
She motioned me to be silent. Her ears, sharper than mine, or more attentive, had heard voices. They were negro voices, a man's and a woman's. We drew deeper into the shadow of the cedar.
"So you got no mo' use for me, nigger?" The man's voice rumbled softly and threatened like distant thunder. "Yo' got to have yo' fling?"
Then the woman's voice, shrill but subdued: "I don' love you no mo', Frank."
"You got er nice home 'n nice lil' babies, 'n you goin' to leave 'em fo' a yaller man—is you?"
They were opposite us now, walking very slowly and occasionally lurching against each other.
"Yo' ain't goin' ter make trouble, Frank?"
"I ain't goin' ter give you up, Lily."
"You ain't? How you goin' ter fix fo' ter keep me?"
They came to a halt and faced each other, the woman defensive and defiant, the man somber, quiet, with a certain savage dignity and slowly smoldering like an inactive volcano. You couldn't see their features, only a white flashing of eyes and teeth in such light as there was.
"You's one er dese new women," said the man softly. "You's got ter be boss 'n have yo' own way."
He stood for some moments looking down into her face, appraising as it were her flightiness, and meditating justice. Then he struck her quietly, swiftly and hard, so that her half-open mouth closed with a sharp snap.
She was not senseless, but she made no effort to rise. He stood over her, smoldering. Then, his voice suddenly soft and tender, "I reckon I is got ter learn you," he said, and he picked her up in his arms and carried her from the roadside deep into the tangled growths of the vacant yard—deeper and deeper, until no sound at all came to us from them.
"That was Mrs. Fulton's laundress and her husband," said Hilda. "She's been trying to copy Mrs. Fulton; buthe'ssettled that. He's a real man, and he'll keep his wife. Women like to be hit and trampled. It proves to them that they're worth while."
"That may be, Hilda. I don't know. I couldn't hit a woman.… You haven't told me that you're not going to tell what you saw."
"I don't know," she said; "he's suffered enough. It ought to end."
"But I thought you—didn't want to hurt me?"
"I don't. Still——"
"Still what?"
"Oh, favors aren't everything."
"What do you mean, Hilda!"
"Oh, I'm just a servant. I suppose I could be bought."
"I thought better of you."
"Not with money."
"Not with money? How then?"
She turned her face up to mine, then smiled and closed her eyes. "A kiss more or less," she said, "wouldn't matter much toyou."
And I kissed her.
Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me until the silence between us grew oppressive. Then with a sudden, "Oh, what's the use!" turned and hurried off. But I caught up with her in two bounds.
"Don't go away like that."
"Oh," she cried, "I hoped youwouldn't. But youdid. It's bad enough to love you, but to despise you too! Oh, don't worry.Iwon't tell. I've been bought, I'velived."
I remained for a long time, alone, under the cedar tree. I was horribly ashamed and troubled, not because I had kissed her, but because I had had the impulse to kiss her again, because I realized at last that it takes more than a romantic love affair to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Because for a moment I saw myself as Hilda saw me—because for a moment I was able to judge Lucy and me, as others would judge us.
I remained for a long time. The negro and his wife came quietly out of the bushes, her arm through his. She would not now run off with the yellow man. I watched them until the darkness swallowed them.
I leaned against the fragrant stem of the cedar, my hand across my eyes. And in that moment of self-reproach, dread and contempt of the future, I too wished the most worthy and sincere wish of my life.
I wished that I had never been born.
For once, with complete fervor, I wished that I had never been born. And if I was to get back any glimmerings of self-respect, I must act like a man. Upon what grounds did I found the hope that Fulton would not soon find out about Lucy and me? Why, on the grounds of moral cowardice, of course. I dreaded to face any drastic, final issue. There was no other reason. Well, if I was to prove to myself that I was not a moral coward, Fulton must be told and the issue faced, and Fulton himself must be out-faced. It was not enough to love and be loved in secret. That way lies stealing and cheating. We must come into the open hand in hand, proclaim our love and demand our rights. If these were denied us—well, it would be too bad. But at least we would have come out from under the rose, and the consequences could be flung openly and courageously in the faces of those who denied us. And it would be fairer to Fulton to tell him. He was suffering torment. With a definite cause to face, it would be easier for him to regain his health and his sanity.
Strong in these resolutions, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But if you think that I went at once to Fulton and told him, you have greatly misapprehended the mental workings of a butterfly.
I went first to Lucy, and told her that I was going to tell. And from her, too, it was as if a weight had been lifted.
"We can't go on this way forever," I said; "we thought we could, but we know we can't. We love each other and we're human, and sooner or later—Oh, it's best to go to him now with a clean bill, and tell him that love is too strong for us all, and that he must come out on the side of love no matter how much it hurts him."
"When are you going to tell him?"
"No time like the present, Lucy."
And I drew a long breath, for in spite of the bold words, I felt panicky. I felt as if the doctors had just set the time for the operation, and that it was sooner than I expected.
"We ought to have told him long ago. Where is he?"
"In the garden."
"It's a hard thing to do. Give me a kiss."
A moment later I felt strong enough and noble enough to slay dragons. And I found Fulton sitting on a garden bench in a recess of clipped privet, Hurry on his lap.
"She isn't feeling very well, poor baby," he said; "it's the sudden heat. She couldn't eat any breakfast. Did you want to see me about something special?"
"Why, yes, I do. But you're busy with Hurry."
"We were just going in to lie down, weren't we?" he said to the child. "I won't be a minute."
He picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the house. A few moments later he returned, smiling, as if she had said something that had touched his humor.
"Let's sit on the bench," he said. "It's the one cool place in Aiken, this morning."
Mechanically I sat down beside him and accepted a cigarette from his case.
"I always dread the first hot spell for the babies," he said. "I'm glad we're going up early this year."
"You'll be in New York a while?"
"At the New Turner. And then Stamford. Poor Lucy dreads Stamford, but I've got to be near the works. What are you planning to do this summer?"
"It depends a great deal on you, John."
Now he turned to me with a very grave expression on his face. "On me?"
"I love Lucy, John, and she feels the same way about me."
His expression of courteous inquiring gravity did not change. "Sothat'swhat was at the bottom of everything. I told her she was seeing too much of you, but she wouldn't listen. Of course, my contention was just on general principles. I thought you were both to be trusted."
"We only found it out just before you went to Palm Beach."
"You ought to have seen it coming. A man of your experience and record isn't like a college freshman in such matters."
"If I had seen it coming, John, believe me I'd have run from it. But all at once it had come, and it's a question now, not of what might have been, but of Lucy's happiness."
"Yes," he said, "we mustn't think of ourselves now, or of the children. We must think of what is best for Lucy. And what is best for Lucy can't be thought out offhand. There's the complication of winding up here, moving, and so forth. What is your idea? Yours and Lucy's?"
"We hope and trust that you won't want to stand in our way."
"Divorce? Well, of course, it might come to that. It's not, however, an idea which I am prepared offhand to receive with enthusiasm. Any more than I propose to act upon the very first impulse which I had when you told me."
"What was that?"
"I thought how delicious it would be to get my automatic and fill you full of lead. But you and Lucy, I take it, have so far resisted your temptations, and I must battle with mine."
"I ought to have saidthat; our temptations have been resisted, John."
He shrugged that vital fact aside with, "Oh, I should have known if there had been anything to know."
"I needn't say, need I, that I feel like hell about your position, your end of it?"
"My position is not so bad as it was. I have something definite to face now. But much as I appreciate your impulsive good will, I don't think that your sympathy is a thing which I care to accept. Lucy, of course, feels that her fancy for you is a more imperative call than her duty to her children and me."
"You've been in love, John."
"Iamin love. I think we had better not discuss our several powers of loving."
He rose from the bench and began to stroll up and down in front of it.
"I haven't," he said, "given this contingency any thought whatever. You and Lucy will have to possess your souls in patience for a time. It is all very sudden. But supposing for a moment that I should consent to a divorce. Are you able to support a wife?"
"I have no money of my own," I said, "but my father, as you know, has oceans of it, and gives me a very handsome income."
"And yet he might not care to support you above the ruins of a home. In that eventuality what could you do? Lucy is very extravagant."
"I could work my hands to the bone for her."
Fulton looked curiously at his own lean, nervous hands, smiled faintly, and said: "Yes, and then be chucked aside like a worn-out garment. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And now you'll be anxious to see Lucy, and report. Tell her that I swallowed the pill without making too much of a face. Tell her that I seemed inclined to be reasonable. Tell her also with my compliments that she must continue to exercise self-restraint and patience. Things are bad enough. If they were any worse I could not answer the consequences."
"All right, John. Thank you for taking it so calmly."
"Oh, I'm not calm inside. Don't worry about that."
I left him there—standing very straight in the garden path, his face the color of granite, and of the stillness.
"What did he say?"
Her face was brilliant with excitement and anxiety. And I told her as well as I could.
"He was preternaturally calm and easy," I said; "I couldn't imagine a man being more well-bred about anything. But he won't say anything definite now. Of course, he ought to have time to think. We could have counted on that, if we'd thought. He will take plenty of time to make up his mind, and then he won't change it. But Lord, I'm glad he knows now; and from us."
There was a quiet knocking on the half-open door of the living-room.
"Come in.… Oh, John, you needn't have knocked."
He came in slowly and quietly, a gentle smile on his lips. The gray granite look had softened into his natural coloring.
"I must say you're a very handsome pair," he said. "Don't go just yet, Archie. If we three are to talk things over in the future, we had better have a little tentative practice. Are we three the only ones who know of this sensational development?"
"And Schuyler," I said.
"Is he for you or against you?"
"We thought we could be just great friends and see each other once in a while. He was for that. But, of course, that was only romantic nonsense."
"Yes, that was nonsense," said Fulton. "It would have made my position altogether too ridiculous. Did it occur to you to be great friends, and not see each other?"
"John," exclaimed Lucy, "you don't understand."
"I don't understand the importance which lovers attach to love? Well, perhaps not. Drunkards hate to cure themselves of drink; smokers of smoke; lovers of love. Yet all these appetites can be cured, often to the immense benefit of the sufferers and of everybody concerned. And so you thought you could lead two lives at once, Lucy?"
"I did think so."
"Gathering strength in romantic byways to see you through the prosy thoroughfares? It wouldn't have worked."
"We know that now."
"You couldn't have lied about every meeting with Archie—lied as to where you were going and where you had been. Truth comes natural to you, even if you seem to have fallen down on some of the other virtues."
Iknewthat he was laboring under a great strain. And yet for the life of me I could not read any symptoms of that laboring in his face or voice. His voice was easy, casual, and tinged with humor. It was almost as if he was relieved to find two such inconsequential persons as Lucy and myself at the bottom of his troubles. Now and then his left eyebrow arched high on his forehead, and there would be a sharp sudden glance in the corresponding eye.
"I wonder," he said, turning to me, "if people in your situation ever look at it from the critical outsider's point of view. Have you considered that a passion for something forbidden is not a natural, not a respectable passion? According to all moral and social laws Lucy is a forbidden object for your love and vice versa. People are not going to think well of you two."
"Oh, we knowthat," said Lucy, wearily.
"My dear Lucy, you mustn't show signs of distress so early in the game. What we are discussing, or trying to throw a little light on, is the subject which just now, by all accounts, should interest you more than anything else in the world. Furthermore, I really must insist on consideration for myself and the children."
"No amount of talk ever made me do right—or wrong," said Lucy; "I just do right or wrong, and of courseyouthink this is wrong. So what's the use?"
"Think it wrong," exclaimed Fulton, "of course I do. Don'tyou?" His voice expressed almost horrified surprise. "Don'tyouthink it wrong to fall out of love with your husband, into love with another man, and to take no more interest in your children than if they were a couple of wooden dolls made in Germany?"
"Caring enough makes everything right," she said, still wearily, as if the whole subject bored her.
"Caringenough!" exclaimed John. "Oh, caringenoughmakes everything right. But do you careenough—either of you? I may change my mind, but just now, as a man fighting for what little happiness there may be left for him in the world, this question of how much you care is the crux of the whole matter. If I thought that you caredenoughI'd take my hat off to the exception which proves the rule that all illicit passions are wrong. If I thought that you caredenoughI'd think that a great wonder had come to pass in the world, and I'd give you my blessing and tell you to go your ways."
Lucy rose and went appealingly to him. "John, dear," she said, "wedocare enough."
He turned to me quickly.
"And you think that?"
"I care enough," I said, "so that nothing else matters—not even the hurt to you."
"Do you care so much that no argument will change you?"
I think Lucy and I must both have smiled at him.
"No pressure of opposition?"
"Caring is supposed to thrive on opposition, isn't it?" said I.
"In short," said John, "if I refuse to be divorced you care enough to run away together into social ostracism?"
Lucy smiled at me and I smiled back at her. And at that Fulton's calmness left him for a moment.
"My God," he cried, "I am up against it."
But almost instantly he had himself once more in hand, and was speaking again in level, almost cheerful tones.
"Social ostracism," he said, "would be very horrid if you stopped caring for each other."
"Why take it for granted that we'd stop caring?"
"I don't. I'm taking nothing for granted. But no girl, Archie, ever cared for a man more than Lucy cared for me—and then she stopped caring. I know less about your stamina. But this is not the first time you've cared."
"It's the first time I'vereallycared," I said.
"It's not the first time you'vesaidthat you really cared, is it?"
I was unable to answer, and his eyes twinkled with a kind of automatic amusement. Then once more grave, "I never eventhought," he said, "that I ever cared about anyone but Lucy. That gives me a peculiar advantage in passing judgment on matters of caring—an advantage enjoyed neither by you nor Lucy. I wasn't any more her first flame than she is yours. But she was my first and only flame. I can speak with a troop of faithful years at my back. But you and she have only been faithful to each other for a matter of days. I am not doubting the intensity of your inclination, but I can't help asking, Will it last? Are you prepared to swear that you will love her and no other all your days?"
"Yes," I said firmly. And I loved her so much at that moment that I felt purified in so saying and believing.
"How about you, Lucy'? Never mind, don't answer. You are thinking of that day when you stood up before all our friends and swore that you would love me all your days. Naturally it would embarrass you to repeat that with respect to another, before my face. So I won't ask you to …"
"John," said Lucy, "all this is so obvious. And it leads nowhere. Talk won't change us. So won't you please say what you are going to do?"
"Not until I know myself," he said. "But there is one thing … I think it would be better all round if you saw less of each other until something is decided. I realize that Jock and Hurry and I are very much in the way. Jock and Hurry naturally don't care how much you two are together. But I do. It isn't that I don't trust you out of my sight. You know that. But the mind of a jealous man is a gallery hung with intolerable pictures. Merely to think of Lucy, Archie, giving you the same look that she used to have for me is to burn in hell-fire."
He turned on his heel, and left us abruptly. We could hear him calling to the nurse to ask how Hurry was feeling, and we could hear his steps going up the stair to the nursery.
"He's going to do the right thing, Lucy," I said.
"I wish he wouldn't talk and talk. The milk's spilled. I suppose we'vegotto keep more or less apart."
"Yes, Lucy."
I held out my arms, and for a moment we made, I suppose, one of those intolerable pictures that hung in Fulton's mental gallery. And then I went away.
It was good to have told. I was very deeply in love; I thought that Lucy's and my future could soon be smoothed into shape, but I did not feel happy. I felt as if I had been through a great ordeal of some sort, and had come off second best. It seemed to me that I ought to have stood up more loudly for my love, for its intensity and power to endure.
In addition there had been about John Fulton an ominous quiet. I could better have endured a violent outbreak. For there is no action without its reaction. After a storm there is calm. But Fulton's calm was more like that which precedes a storm.
His breakdown came after I had left. Lucy told me about it. He had come back to her in the living-room, and said things about me that she would never never forgive.
"I don't care what he says about me," she cried, "but if he talks to me against you, I won't stand it."
"It's natural for him to feel bitter against me. I'm sorry, of course. But it doesn't matter."
"If he's got to feel bitter, let him feel bitter against me. If anyone is to blame, I am to blame."
"What did he say about me?" I asked.
"He said you were the kind of man that men didn't count when they were counting up the number of men they knew. He said you had always been too idle to keep out of mischief. And that no pretty woman would be safe from you—if you weren't afraid … Afraid!"
"That's quite an indictment."
"I said: 'Why didn't you say all that to his face, when he was here, instead of waiting till you could say it behind his back …'"
Here she turned to me with the most wonderful look of tenderness and trust.
"But I know what I know. And you are the kindest and the truest and the gentlest man …"
"Oh, I'm not! I'm not, Lucy!… But what does that matter, if I never let you find out the difference?… We mustn't take what John says too seriously. He's had enough trouble to warp his mind."
She still looked up into my face with that wonderful trust and tenderness. "And you are the most generous man to another man!" she said.
The very next day Evelyn told a few old friends that she was going to be married to Dawson Cooper. At once Lucy felt that she must give a dinner in the happy young people's honor, and to this dinner, as one of Evelyn's oldest friends and of Dawson's for that matter, I had to be asked.
In many ways, this dinner differed in my memory from other dinners. To begin with, it was exceedingly short, and well done. The table was decorated with that flower which some people call Johnny jump-up, and some heartsease, and of which all that I can state positively is that it is the great-grandmother of the pansy family. We had some tag-ends of Moet and Chandon '84 to drink and a bottle of the old Chartreuse. In the second place, it was the last time I was ever to sit at meat under John Fulton's roof. The dinner had psychological peculiarities. I was in love with my hostess; she with me. Twice I could have run away with the girl in honor of whose engagement the dinner was being given. My host, who personally had insisted on my presence, would have been delighted to hear of my sudden death. The waitress would have died for me (I had her word for it), and at the same time she despised me. Within the week I had thrown myself on her mercy, and bought her silence with a kiss.
What a dinner it would have been if we had elected to play truth; if each person present could have been forced to say what he or she knew about the others!
Personally I must have rushed out of the house, my fingers in my ears, like Pilgrim.
But we didn't talk about embarrassing things. We made a lot of noise, and did a lot of laughing, and toasting. But I was glad when it was all over. I was always catching someone's eye, and thinking how much harm a man can do, if with no will to do harm, he follows the lines of least resistance and drifts. The harm that is done of malice and purpose has at least a strength of conviction about it, and disregard of consequences. It is far more respectable to do murder in cold blood, than to slaughter a friend because you happen to be careless with firearms.
Among other things that dinner proved to me that it is possible to do several things at once: to laugh, talk, and think. I kept laughing and talking and helping now and then to tease Evelyn and Dawson, and yet all the while I was busy thinking of other things. And all the thinking was based on one wish; not that I had never been born, but that I had my whole life to live over again. Surely, I thought, with another trial I might have amounted to something. I had money back of me, I thought, and position, and a mind—well, not much of a mind, but when you think what that Italian woman does with half-wit children—surely the right educators could have made something quite showy out of me. The energy I had put into acquiring skill at games and in learning the short cuts to pleasure, might have been expended on righteousness and the development of character. Most at ease with the great, I might, during the dearth of great men, have aspired to be an ambassador. I'd have married young, and have given all the tenderness which various women have roused in me, to one woman. And there would have been children, and stability, and a home constantly invaded by proud and happy grandparents. Or if these fine things had not been in my reach, at least I might have shaken the dust of futile places from my feet, and closed my ears to the voices of futile people. Often I have had the valorous adventurous impulse, and the curiosity to find out what was "beyond the ranges"—merely to resist it. I am Tomlinson, I thought. I might have been Childe Roland.
Was there not still time to turn a new leaf—to be somebody, to accomplish something? Yes, I could make the woman who awaited me beyond the puddle of scandal—happy. I could—I must be unselfish and fine where she was concerned. The world might forgive me, it would never quite forgive her. The world would never believe that we had played the game as fairly as it can be played. There would be such talk as, "Of course the moment Fulton found out what was going on, he got rid of her." Other people would say, "Well, damaged goods is all he ever deserved, anyway."
Lucy, damaged goods? I stole a look at her. Little and lovely and happy and full of laughter at the head of her table, there was no shadow upon that pansy face. She was, as always, living in the moment. From all our troubles and complications, "a rose high up against the thunder were not so white and far away." Remorse would never greatly torment her. In time, too, Fulton's hungry stone-gray face of the last weeks would fade from my memory.
Beyond saying that he thought for various reasons we should see less of each other, Fulton had made no effort to keep Lucy and me apart. If he had an adviser in this, that adviser was Schuyler. The idea, I suppose, was that Lucy, unopposed, would soon tire of the affair, as she had tired of others in her extreme youth, and return to her duty, if not to her affection. But we only loved each other the more. And the various exasperations of delay became hard to bear. Lucy, when what seemed to her a reasonable time had passed, and Fulton had not yet made up his mind about the divorce, was against delay. We had warned Fulton we had played the game, why should we lose time to do so? I had to argue with her against the next steamer for foreign parts, and to persuade her (half persuade her) that in the long run patience would serve us best. "Now," I said, "we don't feel that we need anyone but ourselves. But we both love people—our own kind of people. If John won't play fair (we called it that) our own kind of people will be on our side, no matter what we do. But we should have John's word for it that he is not going to play fair, before we take any drastic step."
The Fultons left Aiken, and after what seemed to me a decent delay of a few days, I followed them to New York. John seemed further than ever from coming to a decision, so Lucy thought. But she evinced a more patient spirit. For the young woman with credit and a fondness for clothes New York is a great solace, even if she is half broken-hearted.
"The contract with the Russian has gone through," she said; "John will make a lot of money. I tell him that it's horrid to get rich by making things that are used to kill people with, but he says there are too many people in the world, and that most of them would be the better for a little killing—so he's given me a fine credit, and I'm buying all the clothes I need."
"Lucy, I don't think you ought to spend his money—any more than you absolutely have to—considering."
"We spoke of that. He said I'd hurt him enough, and that while I was still ostensibly his wife, he wished me to have all that he could give me."
"While you are still ostensibly his wife? That sounds as if—Oh, as if he was going to step out, Lucy, doesn't it?"
"Sometimes he talks as if it was all arranged. He says, 'Next year, if you shouldn't happen to be with me, I'll do so and so,' and all that sort of talk. At other times he talks of building a big house down on Long Island—just the kind of house I've always wanted—just as if he was sure that I would still be living with him."
Well, one day Fulton came to my hotel and sent up his card. I went down to him as quickly as I could finish dressing. He said:
"Sorry to trouble you, but my time isn't quite my own. This seemed a golden opportunity. We've a lot to talk over. I've a taxi outside. Will you drive around a little?"
"Certainly, if you'll just wait while I telephone."
I called up Lucy.
"I can't meet you this morning, I am to have a talk with John. Somehow I feel sure that something is going to be decided." My heart was beating quick and fast. I was unaccountably excited. This excitement seemed to communicate itself to Lucy. She said as much.
"I'm terribly excited," she said, and her voice had a kind of wild, triumphant note in it. "You'll tell me everything the minute you can?"
"Of course. Good luck."
"Good luck."
We drove across Forty-third Street and up the crowded Avenue for several blocks without speaking. Then Fulton smiled a little and spoke in a level, easy voice.
"Perhaps," he said, "the water is not so cold as it looks. Shall we take the plunge?"
"By all means," I said. My heart was thumping nervously. I hoped he would not notice it.
"Lucy and I," he said, "as you know, were wonderfully happy for a good many years. Until last winter, I was never away from her over night. And then, only because of a financial crisis. I have never even looked at another woman with desire, or thought of one. Until last winter, Lucy was the same about other men. She was a wonderful little mother to her kids, and the most faithful, loving, valiant wife that ever belonged to a man full of cares and worries."
"I know all this, John," I said; "I could wish that you had been unhappy together."
"I wish to make several things clear," he said. "According to all civil and moral law, I am an absolutely undivorceable man. There is only one ground for divorce in this state. To clear the decks for you and Lucy, I should have to smirch myself and take a black eye."
"But the people who count always understand these things."
"In order to secure my own unhappiness, to make it everlasting, I should have to perjure myself. I know that it is the custom of the country for married gentlemen who are no longer loved to perjure themselves. But it seems to me a custom that would bear mending. However, it is not yet a question of that."
"Still undecided?"
"No. My mind is made up. I am prepared to step down and take my black eye on certain conditions."
I bowed my head.
"Lucy," he said, "doesn't love the children as much as I do. She has allowed herself to forget how dear they are to her, so it would have to be understood among us three that I should retain the children. You see, I've got to keep something of what belongs to me—to keep me going. Lucy will agree to this, because just now all she wants is new clothes and you. There is another point upon which I feel that I must be satisfied."
"What is that?"
"How long is your young people's infatuation for each other going to last? If it is to be brief and evanescent, it would be absurd for me to take a black eye. But if it is to be stable and enduring, I should be ashamed to stand in the way of it. Knowing something of Lucy's history, how long do you think her fancy for you will last?"
"These things are on the lap of the gods."
"Well, then, yours for her? Now, I know that my love for her, which has been tried by fire and ice and time, will last until I die, or lose my reason. With me it is not a question ofthinking, but ofknowing. How long do youknowthat your love for her will last?"
"That is an impossible question to answer. I think it will always last."
"Thought won't do, Archie, on this all-important phase of the situation, we must have the light of definite knowledge. Now, as a man who has had many love affairs, some innocent and some not, you should have a good working knowledge of your endurance in such matters. If you were cast away on a desert island with a very pretty woman, you to whom women have always been necessary, you from whose hand there has always been some woman or other ready to eat, how long would your love for Lucy last?"
I was amazed momentarily by his question, but it was not one which I could answer.
"A week?" He rather shot this at me, and for a moment there was a satiric gleam in his eye.
I nodded.
"Youknowthat it would last a week?"
I began to feel a little angry, and I said, quite sharply: "Iknowit."
"A month?"
"Yes, a month."
Both our voices had risen. His became easy and level once more.
"A year, Archie?"
"How can I know that, John?" I tried to meet his quick change of manner. "Ithinkso. I'm very sure of it."
"But you don't know?"
"I can'tknow."
"And if the very pretty woman on the island came to you in the night and said she had seen hob-goblin eyes in the dark, and was afraid—how long, though you still love her, would you be faithful to Lucy? A man like you, in good health, with an incompletely developed moral sense?"
"We are getting nowhere," I said, determined to keep my temper.
"We are getting to this," said he, "that if a year from today, you and Lucy still love each other, and have been faithful to each other, and still want each other—you shall have each other."
"A year?" I think he smiled at the surprise and disappointment in my voice.
"During which year," he said, "you will not meet each other except by accident, and you will not correspond."
I said nothing, but he read my thoughts.
"It isn't fair to you and Lucy? At least it is fair to me. Nobody has thought about me. I have had to think for myself, and for the children. Admit this—if your love stands a year's test you will stand a far greater chance of happiness than if you ran away together now, unblessed by the man you had wronged, and unclergied. Admit this, too—that if your love doesn't stand the test, then my life has been ruined for as futile, puerile, misbegotten a passion as ever reared its head under an honest man's roof. Admit it! Admit it."
"I'm not sure that I admit any such thing."
"Then, my dear fellow," he said, "your mental and moral capacity are on precisely the same plane.… I'm sure you don't want to injure Lucy. Give her this chance to straighten out and get untangled. If there is any truth in your love for her you will see that this way is best for her."
"I am thinking of her happiness."
"Areyou?"
"She's been very patient, John. I can't tell you how patient."
"For God's sake don't try to tell me. Haven't I had enough to bear?"
"I think Lucy won't be willing to wait a year."
"She must be made willing. You must help. A year soon passes—soon passes. If things then are as they are now, then I shall believe that your love for each other is strong and fine, and I shall renounce my claim with a good grace—a good grace."
"If we can't wait a year, John!"
"You mean if you won't? In that case I shall not feel that Lucy is entitled to a divorce, or either of you to any money at my hands. Among the people who are necessary to you and Lucy, a wronged and upright husband has great power. If you are such children, such fools, as not to be willing to stand a test of your love, you will have to be punished. It would mean that your passion has nothing to do with what is understood by love. You would merely be pointed at and passed up as a rather well-known young couple with adulterous proclivities."
There was a long, charged silence.
"The law and the prophets are all on your side, John, but——"
"You'll not answer now, please. You'll think it over. And don't forget all the pleasant things that you can do in a year. There's that hunting trip in Somaliland you used to talk about so much—there's London and Paris—wonderful places for a man who's trying to cure himself of an unlawful love."
"Trying tocurehimself?"
"Of course. Jesting aside, don't you think that what you and Lucy want to do to Jock and Hurry and me iswrong? Of course you do. You're not a devil. If, by uttering the wish, you could bring it about that you had never loved Lucy, that she had never fallen out of love with me and loved you over the heads of her children, that all might be as it was when you first began to come to our house, wouldn't you utter that wish? Of course you would."
He was smiling at me now, very gently and cunningly, and there was, at the same time, in his eyes an awful pathos.
"Why, yes," I said, "I suppose so."
"Just bear out what I've always maintained," said he; "I've always maintained that you were a good fellow—at heart."
"Am I to see Lucy again—before the year begins?"
"Is it very necessary?"
"I suppose not. But——"
"Well, I imagine Lucy will insist on seeing you. It will be a pity, but after all she's only a little child in some ways. It's all going to be very hard for you both, at first," he said gently. "So you shall see each other again—if she says so."
Suddenly he reached out his hand, and I took it.
"Oh," he said, "I needed your help."