Why, she"s like a little child, and she"s being so hurt. You"ve never refused me anything. Help me to make her happy."
"When she has gotten over her fancy for you, when Fulton has plenty of money for her to spend, she will be as happy as she deserves to be--until she makes herself miserable again by indulging in some affair similar to this. Now, my dear boy, go back to her, tell her that you haven"t enough money to elope on and no way of getting it. Tell her also that if at the end of a year"s probation you and she still want each other, n.o.body will oppose you, and that you, on the day of your marriage to her, will be made a rich man in your own right."
"Father, I _want_ her so."
"And I _want_ champagne so," said my father. "And the accursed doctor has forbidden it. Do I torture myself? Not at all. I turn for solace to an excellent bottle of Scotch whiskey. And this has at least the effect of making me want the champagne less. Don"t get confused between psychology and physiology. If I were in your boots I"d slip over to Paris--and drink Scotch whiskey."
So I went back to New York, and, as soon as possible, I talked to Lucy over the telephone, and told her about the interview with my father.
"But," I finished, "we"ll do whatever you say. We can"t very well land in Europe without any money; but I"ve still got most of the pa.s.sage money; and if you say so, we can stay right in this country and live on that for a few weeks, while I try to get a job. I could borrow some money, but it would have to be paid back. Oh, Lucy, this is such a humiliating confession to make, but what _can_ I do?"
"Everybody is against us," she said, "everything--I don"t suppose there"s any use struggling."
She sounded cold and tired.
"I suppose," she went on slowly, "we"ll have to wait, the way John says. Shall we?"
"You say it, Lucy. Don"t make me say it."
"So we"ll wait," she said; "not see each other, and not communicate. I don"t see how I can stand it, but I suppose I can. . . . A whole year--a whole year!"
"At the end of it, my darling, all that there is in the world for me, n.o.body will stand in our way; there"ll be plenty of money and a long life before us."
"Listen . . . all the long time will you take care of yourself?"
"Yes, Lucy."
"And not notice any other ladies?" . . .
"Lucy . . . let"s take a chance on what I have got."
A long silence. Then: "Oh, no. I suppose John"s right. Everybody"s right. . . . But"--there was a valiant ring in her voice, "we"ll show "em they were wrong and cruel. Won"t we?"
"Yes, Lucy."
"Good-by, then, and G.o.d bless and keep you."
"It"s only for a year, Lucy."
I heard a short, dry sob. It was mine.
x.x.xII
I don"t know how I got through the next ten days. After three of them had pa.s.sed I began to fear a mental breakdown, because my mind kept working all by itself, without orders. If I wanted to think forward, to the end of the probationary year, I couldn"t. Always I kept thinking I ought to have done, or said, so and so. I ought to have been firmer. I was always reviving that drive in the taxicab with Fulton, or that last interview with my father. If my love was strong and fine I ought never to have knuckled under. They had had too easy a time with me. I had played into their hands, and they had treated me like a child. From pure humiliation I could not sleep at night.
And what was Lucy doing? How was she bearing it? What sort of life was she leading, the poor, abused child? The world seemed to have all joined against me in a conspiracy of silence. n.o.body mentioned Lucy in my hearing. Although the same city held us, until they moved to Stamford, I had no accidental glimpse of her. Our last talk had not been in the least satisfactory. It seemed to me that I must see her once more to preach courage and hope. During those first ten nights I hardly slept at all. Sometimes I would picture out Lucy"s whole course of life during the next few months. And I imagined that, grown at last utterly indifferent through suffering, she might drift back into her former relations with Fulton, if only because he loved her so much, and no one can keep on saying no forever. Such imaginings had sometimes the vividness of scenes actually witnessed and threw me into tortures of jealousy.
Not until a short period of the tenth day was Lucy ever actually out of my mind. I had been sitting in a chair staring at a newspaper, all my nerves tense and hungry, when suddenly they seemed to have relaxed and to have been fed. The skin of my face no longer seemed tightly stretched. I felt as if I had waked from a refreshing sleep; but this was not the case. I had simply, without deliberation, forgotten Lucy for half an hour, and been making agreeable personal plans for the year of probation.
"Good Lord," I thought; "has living without her, already begun to be easier?"
It had. I began to take pleasure in seeing my friends; to look forward to the Newport season, to the international tennis, to the golf championship at Ekwanok, to the thousand and one things that make for the happiness of a b.u.t.terfly"s summer.
After a month of Newport, days pa.s.sed with only hurried thoughts of Lucy. Chance mention of her name gave me no uneasiness; they affected my heart, like sudden trumpets, but I knew that my face had become an inscrutable mask, and that my voice was in perfect control. Those who had thought that there was something between us began to think differently.
And then, after days of suspense, surmise, and real consternation, the legs of civilization seemed to have been knocked from under it, and the greatest nations of Europe flew at each other.
Now indeed there seemed an easy way to the year"s end. The Germans rolled through Belgium and into France, outraging humanity. It looked as if they would roll right into Paris, and sow salt where the world"s first city had stood.
I rushed up to Bar Harbor to tell my parents that I was going to France to enlist in the foreign legion. Oh, how swiftly the time would fly, I thought. That I might get crippled or killed never occurred to me. I thought only that having failed at everything else, I must obviously be possessed of military genius. I pictured myself climbing the b.l.o.o.d.y ladder of promotion to high command and winning the grat.i.tude of that country which next to my own I love the most.
My mother, to whom I first broached the news, did not cry or make a fuss. But I saw that I had distressed her terribly.
"It isn"t our war," she said; "and what use will one more enlisted man be to _them_? And besides, my dear, _only_ sons are always the first ones to get hurt; only sons and men whose families are dependent upon them. But . . ." and here she gave me a wonderful look . . . "I think I know why you want to go. And that makes me very proud."
"I think you _do_ know, Mumsey," I said. "It"s because we"d rather get hurt trying to do something worth while, than go on the way we"ve always gone on, amounting to nothing, and disappointing everybody."
Then she got me in her arms, and cried over me a little.
My father, as usual, took my decision with the most good-natured indifference.
"Fine experience," he said, "for any man that"s free to go. Makes me wish I were younger and without obligations. Still I can enjoy the music at the swimming-pool with a free conscience; because I"m sending over all the money I can spare. . . . How did you reach the conclusion that you could go?"
"_Could_ go?"
"Yes. Of course you"ve no complication in your life that should keep you from going. Well, I"m glad of that."
"It seems to me that if anyone is free to go, I am."
He smiled upon me, somewhat too playfully for my comfort, and shook his head slowly. "So Fulton and I were right about the year"s probation.
I"m delighted. How soon did you and Lucy find out that absence _doesn"t_ make the heart grow fonder?"
"Oh," I said, "it isn"t _that_. What has that to do with it? There"s a year to be got over, and fighting"s the most agreeable and the quickest way I can think of just now."
My father looked disappointed.
"I hoped you had got over caring. And--you haven"t?"
For a few moments I met his eyes. But only for a few moments. He didn"t laugh. "I"m glad," he said simply.
I tried to explain exactly how I felt.
"Of course not seeing her or hearing from her--why--you see--but when I do see her it will all come right back. I _know_ that."
He smiled a little grimly. "Normally," he said, "there are years of pleasant living before you. But not if you get yourself killed--not if you lose an arm or a leg, or come back with half your face shot off, and your one remaining ear stone deaf from cannon fire. But anyway I"m glad the Fulton business is over. Your love has cooled and, even if Lucy"s hasn"t--there could never be anything between you now?"