I showed him.
"How many times do you ring if you want a c.o.c.ktail?"
"Twice. If you"ll ring four times I"ll have one with you. I spilt mine."
So my father pushed the bell four times and complimented me on my love of system and order, and then he returned to his first question.
"Do you think it wise?"
"Well, father," I said, "we"ve always been pretty good friends. Will you tell me why you think it isn"t wise?"
"Yes, I will," he said; "I think it"s foolish for a man to run after women in his own cla.s.s for any other purpose than matrimony."
"So do I!" said I.
"A man," he persisted, "doesn"t always know that he is running after a woman. Nature will fool him. Look at young lovers! Why, they actually believe in the beautiful fabric of spiritual poetry that they weave about each other. And nature lets "em. But men who have seen life, and have lived, as I shouldn"t be at all surprised if you had, for instance, are able to see the ugly mundane facts through the rosy mist. My boy, you and Lucy Fulton are being talked about. You don"t have to tell me it"s none of my business, I know that. But I can"t help wanting you to steer clear of rows, and I don"t want to see any woman get mud thrown on her because of you. For a man of course, unfortunately, consequences never amount to much. It"s for the woman that I should plead if I had any eloquence or persuasiveness. I"d say to you, don"t run away for your own sake, that"s not worth while; but run away for hers. Now you will forgive me, my dear fellow, won"t you, for b.u.t.ting in like this. . . ."
The c.o.c.ktails came, and when the man who brought them had gone, I said:
"It"s for her sake that I"m staying, father; will you listen a little?
You"re the only man in the world that I can talk to without fear of being repeated. As far as going to California is concerned I _was_ going--until a late hour this afternoon. I felt more concern at leaving my mother than anyone else. You believe that?"
He nodded to what was left of his c.o.c.ktail.
"Lucy and I may have been talked about, but there was absolutely no reason why we should have been. We rode together this afternoon and out of a clear sky she told me that she had fallen out of love with her husband--for no _reason_ at all, that"s the worst of it--and she doesn"t know what to do, and has no friend she feels like talking to about it, except me. That"s why I"m staying. She _asked_ me not to go. And of course I said I wouldn"t."
My father finished his c.o.c.ktail, and blew his nose.
"Oh," I said, "I"m not infatuated with the situation either."
"Women certainly do beat the Dutch!" said my father. "I suppose she wants advice, and backing when she doesn"t follow it."
"If I can keep her in the path of her duty, father, be sure I will."
"And if you can"t?"
"It"s a real tragedy," I said. "They were the happiest and most loving couple in the world, except you and mother, and only a short time ago."
"What time is it?" asked my father.
"I"ve broken my watch."
"Well, it doesn"t matter if we are a little late for dinner."
He cleared his throat, and turned a fine turkey-c.o.c.k red, and looked very old-fashioned and handsome.
"I never thought to tell you this," he said; "it"s like throwing mud on a saint. Once your mother came to me and said she didn"t love me any more and that she loved another man and wanted to go away with him."
"I feel as if you"d kicked my feet out from under me."
"It doesn"t seem to have come quite to that with Lucy, but it may, and in some ways the cases are parallel. I took counsel with your grandfather. He advised me to whip her. When I refused to do that, he gave less drastic advice, which I followed. I told your mother and the man that if after a year during which they should neither see each other nor communicate they still wanted each other, I would give your mother a divorce. I don"t know when they stopped caring about each other. I think it took your mother less than three months to get over him. And if he lasted three weeks, why I"m the dog that--he was."
I detected a ring of pa.s.sionate hatred in my father"s voice.
"So she came back to me," he said presently, "in a little less than a year. Your little sister was your mother"s offering of conciliation.
And we have lived happily. But things have never been with us quite as they were. I have never known if your mother really got to loving me again, or if she has raised a great monument of simulation and devotion upon a pedestal of shame and remorse. Even now, if I drink a little more than is good for me, she never criticizes. She feels that she has forfeited that prerogative."
"What became of the man?"
"He died of heart failure," said my father, "in a disreputable place.
They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it, I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But there is no making a woman believe what she doesn"t want to believe.
He was fascinating to women, and a cur. He kept his compact with me, not because of his given word, but because he was physically afraid of me."
"Thank you for telling me all this, father," I said; "I like you better and better. But in one way the cases aren"t parallel. In Lucy"s case there is no other man."
"Not yet," said my father; "but when a woman no longer loves her husband, look out for her. She has become a huntress--she is a lovely sloop-of-war that has cleared her decks for action. . . . Are you ready?"
I slipped my arm through my father"s and we went downstairs together.
"I"m sorry you"re mixed up in this," he said; "but you couldn"t go when she made a point of your staying. I"m obliged to you for telling me."
XIV
It grew very warm during the evening and windy. By bedtime there was a hot, lifeless gale blowing from the southeast. Now and then the moon shone out brightly through the smother of tearing clouds, and was visible for a moment in all her glory, only to be submerged the next moment and blotted out. About two o"clock single raindrops began to splash so loudly on the veranda roof just outside my window that the noise waked me; after that I only slept fitfully, and my ears were never free from the loud roaring of the tropic rain that began presently to fall upon Aiken. I dreamed that somebody had stolen the Great Lakes and while being hotly pursued had dropped them. All day it rained like that, and all the following night, and only let up a little the afternoon of the second day. I got into an oilskin then and walked out to the Fultons".
Theirs was a nervous household. Jock and Hurry confined indoors for nearly two days had had too little exercise and too many good things to eat. They were quite cross and irrepressible. John had the fidgets.
He couldn"t even stay in the same room for more than a minute, and he wouldn"t even try sitting down for a change. Lucy had had to give up at least a dozen things that required dry weather and sunshine. She seemed to take the rain as something directed particularly against herself by malicious persons. Evelyn, also cross and nervous, was on the point of retiring to her own room to write letters. Just then Dawson Cooper telephoned to know if she cared to take a little walk in the rain and she accepted with alacrity.
"It"s gotten so that he only has to whistle," said Lucy petulantly, when Evelyn had gone. "I think she"s made up her mind to be landed."
Fulton came and went. Every now and then he dropped on the piano-stool for a few moments and made the instrument roar and thunder; once he played something peaceful and sad and even, in which one voice with tears in it ran away from another.
The piano was in the next room, and whenever it began to sound, Lucy dropped her work into her lap and listened. At such time she had an alert, startled look. She resembled a fawn when it hears a stick snap in the forest.
We heard him leave the piano, cross the hall and go into the dining-room.
"He"s hardly touched his piano in years," said Lucy. "But now he"s at it in fits and starts from morning till night. Night before last when the rain began he got up and went down in his bare feet and played for hours. I had to fetch him and make him come back to bed."
Then she seemed to feel that an explanation was necessary. She bent rosily over the work, and said: "We don"t want the servants to know."
Again the piano began to ripple and thunder. Again we heard John go into the dining-room.
I must have lifted an eyebrow, for Lucy said:
"Yes. I"m afraid so, but it doesn"t seem to go to his head. Oh," she said, "it wrings my heart, but I haven"t the right to say anything."