"Do I have to tell you that you are one of the smartest looking people I know, Hilda? They"ll think you are the Marchioness of Amber----" I glanced at her red hair, which did have amber lights in it, "and they"ll envy. So do come. Will you?"
I borrowed a fine new racing runabout, and at six o"clock called for her at the address she had given me. She had gotten herself up with the most discreet good taste, and looked perfectly charming. She must have read the approval in my glance, for the color flew to her cheeks, and she looked triumphantly pleased.
"Going to be warm enough?"
"Yes, thank you."
"It"s mighty nice of you to come."
"Oh, when you held out half an excuse to me, I couldn"t help coming."
"What"s your idea--for England? To be a nurse--or what?"
"A nurse, sir."
"I"m not _sir_, please. I"m going to be a nurse, too. I told you once that I"d always be your friend. And a friend isn"t ever sir. So don"t do it again."
"I"ll not," she said.
Presently I began to ask her about the Fultons. At first her answers were short and unsatisfactory, but presently she began to warm to the topic.
Stamford? Oh, it had been awful. The house had never been divided in its allegiance, but n.o.body could have remained callous to Mrs. Fulton"s grief. Meals were especially awful. Mr. and Mrs. Fulton tried to make conversation. Sometimes just when it seemed as if she was going to be a little cheerful--phist! her eyes would fill with tears, and she would bolt from the room. At such times Mr. Fulton"s face was a study of pity for her and grief for them both. She was good to the children; no question about that. Sometimes she grabbed them into her arms and hugged them too hard. It was as if she was trying by sheer physical effort to give them back what she had taken away from them.
Sometimes one thought one heard little Hurry crying very softly and bitterly, and it would turn out to be Mrs. Fulton, locked in her bedroom. Pressure of business, success, kept Mr. Fulton going.
Sometimes the two tried to talk things over. But it was an irritating, mosquitoey house. Always their voices ended by rising to the point where they could be heard all over the ramshackle paper-thin dwelling.
It stood on a lawn that sloped to tidal waters, very ugly and muddy at low tide. A long gangway reached to a float for boats; here the water was deep enough to dive into at half tide. Often at dawn, if the tide was right, and you happened to be awake, you might see Mr. Fulton descend the wet lawn in wrapper and bare feet for the swim that seemed to make up to him for his sleepless nights. You knew that he was in trouble by the way that he took to the water. It"s always a little shivery at dawn, but he never hesitated. His wrapper was coming off by the time he reached the float--it was too far off to mind watching him--and into the water he"d go, head first, as quick as he could get in. It was almost as if he was afraid he"d die before he got to it.
He was a fine swimmer, but oftenest he just lay about, sometimes with his face under. Then he looked like a drowned man. Sometimes he went in earlier than dawn. She had seen phosph.o.r.escence off the float in the black night, and heard the clean, quiet splash of his dive.
Once he stayed in so long that Mrs. Fulton called to him from her window, "_Please_ come in, John, I"m frightened." Oh, yes, she wanted to be free from him, perhaps she still does, but not that way. If anything had happened to him, if he had taken his life, for instance, one imagined that in the first agonies of remorse she would have taken hers too.
It must have been terrible for her--at first--never hearing from _you_, not knowing where you were, or what you were doing, whether you were sick or well. Of course she wanted you to be happy, but with _her_.
It would have been a comfort to know that you were suffering as much as she was. And she couldn"t know.
She had a calendar in her room. She kept tab on it of the days as they pa.s.sed, beginning with the first day of the probationary year. She"d draw a line through each day--each day when she went to bed, and hoped that the day was really over. She had her bad, wicked, black, sleepless nights, too. You could always tell by how late she was in the morning. She had a child"s happy faculty of being able to make up for lost sleep. Well, when the day seemed over she drew a line through it. One day the chambermaid came below stairs (it was the first we knew of it) and propounded a conundrum. "When is a day not a day?" No one could guess. So she said, "When Mrs. Fulton doesn"t draw a line through it." So it seemed that the forty-ninth day of her probation had not been a pa.s.sage of time. Time had stood still. Why? Well, in the afternoon Mrs. Fulton had gone as crew with a young gentleman who owned a knockabout, and they had got wet to the skin, and had won a leg on some pennant or other after a close, well-sailed race. Mrs. Fulton had come home about dark, drenched, blooming, buoyant, and chattering about the events of the afternoon. She had had her first heart-felt good time of the probationary year. For once, time had not dragged.
Time had stood excitingly, exhilaratingly still. She had forgotten to scratch off the day.
Things went better after that. Twice a week, rain or shine, she was crew of the young gentleman"s knockabout. Often they went for practice sails. Sometimes they took Jock and Hurry. In hot weather they wore bathing suits. The young gentleman? He was to be a Yale senior, come autumn. He rowed on the Yale crew. My! you should have seen his arms and legs--so strong and so brown, so becoming to his dark blue bathing suit. His hair was so sunburnt that it looked like mola.s.ses candy. He could stay in the water all day and fetch from the bottom anything that was thrown in for him. Sometimes he came to meals. He was very quiet and shy. He blushed a good deal. And there was a weight on his mind.
He had a condition to make up--political economy. He could hold Jock and Hurry out at arm"s length, one in each hand, but the weight on his mind was too much for him. Every time the Fultons mentioned it to him, he groaned. He was truly comical when he groaned. Toward autumn he began to get gloomy. Summer was over, college would open. No more sails; no more Mrs. Fulton. Below stairs one knew that he was in love with Mrs. Fulton. How? Well, when one let him out at the front door, he always drew in a sigh that he held all the way to the front gate.
One waited to hear him let it out. It would have blown out a gas jet across a good-sized room. There were other ways of telling. And since the forty-ninth day that was not a day, no one had heard Mrs. Fulton crying.
He came to say good-by. One never knew just what happened. They were in the front hall. Suddenly the front door must have opened. Fulton must have come in, for suddenly one heard his laugh. It was the strangest laugh in the world, full of joy, full of laughter, and full of scorn.
He saw the young gentleman to the front gate. He clapped the young gentleman on the back, and said (the parlor maid had heard); "Don"t worry! It"s all right! Don"t make a mountain out of a mole-hill!" and then in a different voice, "Bless you, my son!"
Then he had come back to the house still laughing, and one heard him shouting, "Where are you, Lucy? Come here! The game"s up now! You must see that for yourself! Don"t be a goat!"
Did she see for herself? Oh, yes. She hadn"t loved the young gentleman, not really. She had liked him enough to get over you being a life and death matter to her. That was all. She had liked him enough to let him kiss her at parting. That must have been what Mr.
Fulton had caught them at.
"But, Hilda," I interrupted, "why didn"t he tell me that it was all over, when I saw him in New York--just before Christmas?"
"Well, they couldn"t know how you felt, could they? Maybe he wanted you to have your full year. Maybe he thought you"d fall down as she had, and that she"d hear of it and that it would be a lesson to her.
How should _I_ know?"
She told me more. The very night of the young gentleman"s departure, late, a telegram had come to Mr. Fulton. She, Hilda, had gone down to the front door, signed for the telegram, and carried it to Mr. Fulton"s room. He did not answer to her first light knock; nor to a first or second loud knock. She pushed the door open. The room was full of moonlight. Mr. Fulton"s bed was empty. It had not been slept in.
Hilda tiptoed to the end of the corridor, laid the telegram on the floor in front of Mrs. Fulton"s door, knocked very firmly, and the moment she heard someone stirring within, turned upon her heel and fled.
So much for the average strength of those grand pa.s.sions upon which so many marriages are wrecked!
"Are they happy now, Hilda--the way they used to be?"
Oh no, not happy, fairly contented. She would never love him the way she used to. Her fantastics [Transcriber"s note: fantasies?] had taken the beauty plumb out of their lives. But something remained. A loving husband, an unloving, but naturally kind, good-natured and affectionate wife, trying to do her duty by the two children that were and the one that was to be.
"Oh, Mr. Mannering," said Hilda; "you mustn"t blame yourself too much.
If it hadn"t been you, it would have been someone else. I didn"t think so, but now I do. And _he_ might not have been a gentleman."
x.x.xV
We had dinner on the terrace of the Tamerlane Inn, overlooking the Sound.
"But, Hilda," I was arguing, toward coffee, "we might have gone on caring forever--if we hadn"t been separated. Propinquity feeds love; absence starves it."
"Love? Indeed it doesn"t. Fancy? Yes."
She looked straight in my eyes.
"Hilda," I said, "you--you don"t still--that way--about me?"
"Don"t I?" she said slowly. "Why else would I lie awake to hear Mr.
Fulton go swimming? Why else would I be wanting to go with the Red Cross to the front where the bullets are?"
"But you told me in Aiken that you--that you despised me."
"It would be a poor love," she said, "that couldn"t live down a little contempt that had jealousy for its father and mother."
We continued to look at each other while the waiter brought and served the coffee. Then I said: "Hilda, I know one thing. What you"ve got to give ought not to go begging."
Her eyes part-way filled, but she gave her shoulders a valiant little shrug. Then, with a sudden strong emotion, and a thrill in her voice: "That"s for you to say," she said.
"Do you mean that?"
"You had only to ask," she said; "ever."