"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 G.o.d," 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"ve _really_ cared," I said.
"It"s not the first time you"ve _said_ that you really cared, is it?"
I was unable to answer, and his eyes twinkled with a kind of automatic amus.e.m.e.nt. Then once more grave, "I never even _thought_," he said, "that I ever cared about anyone but Lucy. That gives me a peculiar advantage in pa.s.sing 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 embarra.s.s 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 h.e.l.l-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"ve _got_ to 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.
XXVIII
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 embarra.s.sing 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 amba.s.sador. 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.
XXIX