Lucy listened eagerly. She didn"t in the least mind a conversation that was all about herself.
"The whole school," I said, "was touched with solemnity. Now you wouldn"t take me for a praying man, would you?"
"I don"t know. Wouldn"t I?"
"Whether I am or not," I said, "doesn"t matter now, because I have so little to pray for. But at that time I went down on my knees and prayed that you"d get well."
"You were very fond of Schuyler, weren"t you?"
"And am. But that wasn"t the reason. I don"t know just what the reason was. Maybe I was looking forward to this ride, and didn"t want to miss it! I was ashamed to be seen praying, so I prayed in bed. But I was afraid that wouldn"t do any good, so when my roommate had gone to sleep I got up in the dark and went down on my marrowbones on the bare icy floor, and I prayed like a good "un."
Lucy"s mouth laughed, but her eyes prayed.
"Then, maybe," she said, "if it hadn"t been for you, I wouldn"t be here now."
"I"d like to think that," I said; "but there must have been lots of others who prayed. I should like nothing better than a Carnegie hero medal, with the attached pension, but the jury require proofs."
"It"s funny," she said, "to think of you kneeling on the icy floor and praying for me."
"For your _recovery_!" I corrected her.
"I think it would have been nicer if you had prayed for me. Didn"t you--even a little?"
"If I had realized that I could be seven years older than you and still belong to the same generation, my prayers would have been altogether different, and there would have been more of them."
"Where do you think _this_ road goes?"
She turned into it without waiting for an answer, and urged her pony into a gentle amble.
I caught up with her and said: "I know this trail. It will take us straight to the Whitney drive. Then we can go right up over the hill and come out by Sand River."
"It"s fun," she said, "to find somebody that likes riding. Everybody"s mad about golf. John rides whenever I ask him, but it"s cruel to separate him from the new mid-iron that Jimmie made for him. And he won"t let me ride alone."
Poor John Fulton showed little worldly wisdom in making that prohibition.
"I"d rather ride than eat," I said. "Will you ride again tomorrow?"
She quoted the Aiken story of the lonely bachelor in the boarding-house. He is called to the telephone, hears a hospitable voice that says, "Will you come to lunch tomorrow at one-thirty?" and answers promptly, "You _bet_ I will! . . . Who is it?"
Just before you reach the Whitney drive there is a right angle turn from the trail which we were following; it back-tracks a little, errs and strays through some fine jasmine "bowers," and comes out at the old race track.
"It"s early," I said; "let"s go this way."
She wheeled her pony instantly.
"Do you always do what you"re told?"
She bowed her head very humbly, and meekly, through a mischievous mouth, said: "Yes, sir!" And added: "Except when awfully long."
"What do you mean by that?"
"That the most fun is beginning something, and then beginning something else before you get all tired out and tangled up. Never say no until you are sure that what"s been proposed isn"t any good. _Then_ back out!"
"Don"t you ever say no?"
"I "spect I was very badly brought up. n.o.body ever said no to me."
We wound up a hot hillside among tangled ma.s.ses of jasmine, in which here and there were set star-like golden flowers, whose gardenia-like perfume mixed with the resinous aromatic smell of the long-needle pines. I rode a little behind, on purpose, for I love to see a pretty woman turn her head and look backward across her shoulder. She has no pose more charming, unless it be when she stands before the "laughing mirror" and lifts her hands to her hair.
"I have often wondered," I said, "how you happened to marry Fulton.
But now I understand. It was because you couldn"t say no to anybody, and yet he couldn"t by any possible chance have been the first to ask.
What has become of the first poor fellow to whom you were unable to say no? . . . And all the others?"
She looked back at me over her shoulder, her eyebrows lifted in an effort of memory, which, with a mischievous laugh, she presently abandoned.
"Why," she said, "as far as I know: "One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo"s nest."" I wish I could convey by words the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea, that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was really as happy and as carefree as she seemed to be, and not some loyal martyr upon the altar of matrimony.
To look at, she was but a child in her teens, slender and virginal, and yet I had it from Fulton himself that her babies had weighed nine pounds apiece and that she had nursed them both. "She looks down," he said, "with contempt, on bottle babies."
He was just coming in from golf, with the smug smile of one who has played a good round, on his face. His buggy boy, Cornelius Twombly, a black imp of twelve, who carried a razor in his hip pocket, wore also the smug look of one who has caddied to victory, and won certain nickels and dimes from another caddie upon the main and minor issues of the match.
As Fulton climbed out of his rickety, clattering runabout, Mrs. Fulton slipped from her smart pony, and they met with an honest kiss, like lovers long parted, and at once each began to tell the other all about everything.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "They met with an honest kiss, like lovers long parted."]
"If they love each other like that," I thought, "why doesn"t he always ride with her, or why doesn"t she always play golf with him?"
I heard such expressions as "And the new mid-iron" . . . "The jasmine will be in full bloom in a week." "As we were going to Black Jack"
(this is the eighth hole at Aiken, where the holes are all so good that they are spoken of by name instead of by number). "Mr. Mannering is the _nicest_ person to ride with," etc., etc.
Then Fulton remembered my existence. "You"ll not go without a drink!"
he said.
Mrs. Fulton"s eyes confirmed the invitation, so I chucked the reins over my pony"s head to make him think that he was tied to a hitching-post, and went into the house with them. But I did not stay long. Fulton wanted to talk golf; Mrs. Fulton wanted to bathe and change into skirts, and I wanted to go away by myself and think. I wanted to study out why it was that toward the end of our ride together, whenever Mrs. Fulton spoke to me or looked back at me over her shoulder, my pulses seemed to quicken--and my breathing.
V
We were at the beginning of those parlous times when the Democrats, having come into power upon a wave of impa.s.sioned idiocy and jealousy, were beginning to make us poor at home and despised abroad. A schoolmaster president, with three cabinet officers plucked by the hair from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, had put a temporary end to all our best qualities as a nation, with the possible exception of the power to laugh at jokes.
It was a hectic winter in Aiken. Some of the richest members of the Aiken Club were in trouble. There was some talk of making two and a half cents a point bridge standard instead of five. Even my own father asked me to go a little light, if I could, and not be led into any foolishness. "I"ve not been hit yet," he said, "but you can"t tell what the fools will do next." You heard very few bets made. There was less drinking. It was as if certain men were going into training in order to be at their very best when the worst times should come.
Fulton"s Cartridge Company, with its headquarters in New York and its mills in Bridgeport, Connecticut, had not paid a dividend in some time.
He had only his salary as president (twenty or twenty-five thousand a year, I believe), and it was with the drastic intention of cutting that salary in two, and otherwise paring the company"s expenses to the quick, that he went north the first week in March.
I dined with them the night before he left. There were only four of us: the Fultons, myself, and one of those charming Southampton girls, with sea-blue eyes, and sunburned hair, who swim like seals, play tennis like men, and fear nothing. Evelyn Gray was the name of this particular one. I liked her immensely, and was not altogether sorry to learn that she was to keep Lucy Fulton company until Fulton returned.