"I needn"t say, need I, that I feel like h.e.l.l 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."
"I _am_ in 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.
XXVII
"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 appet.i.tes 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."
I _knew_ that 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 pa.s.sion for something forbidden is not a natural, not a respectable pa.s.sion? 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 know _that_," 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 course _you_ think this is wrong. So what"s the use?"
"Think it wrong," exclaimed Fulton, "of course I do. Don"t _you_?"
His voice expressed almost horrified surprise. "Don"t _you_ think 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.
"Caring _enough_!" exclaimed John. "Oh, caring _enough_ makes everything right. But do you care _enough_--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 cared _enough_ I"d take my hat off to the exception which proves the rule that all illicit pa.s.sions are wrong. If I thought that you cared _enough_ I"d think that a great wonder had come to pa.s.s 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, "we _do_ care 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.