"It would be a delightful marriage," said my mother with enthusiasm, "for everybody."
"With the possible exception of Evelyn and me."
Just after this Evelyn, who was great friends with my mother, came in without being announced, and said that she was famished, and that she put herself entirely in our hands. So we fed her tea, toast, hot biscuits, three kinds of sandwiches, and as many kinds of cakes. And she finished off with a tumbler full of thick cream.
"Been sitting by your window lately," I asked, "looking at the moon?"
"_He_ thinks," Evelyn complained to my mother, "that delicate sentiments and a hearty appet.i.te don"t go together. But we know better, don"t we?"
"When I"m in love," I said, "I eat like a canary bird. I just waste away. Don"t I, mother?"
"Fall in love with somebody," said my mother, "and I"ll tell you."
"n.o.body encourages me," I said; "my life has been one long rebuff, I remind myself of a dog with muddy paws; whenever I start to jump up I get a whack on the nose."
"Your sad lot," said Evelyn, "is almost the only topic of conversation among sympathetic people. But of course, if you _will_ have muddy paws----!"
"And yet, seriously," I said; "somewhere in this wide world there must be one girl in whose eyes I might succeed in pa.s.sing myself off as a hero. I wish to heaven I had her address--a little cream?"
Evelyn scorned the hospitable suggestion and reached for her gloves and riding crop.
"I came to see you," she said to my mother, "really I did. And I"ve done nothing but eat. I"m coming again soon when there"s n.o.body here but you, and the larder is low."
"Good Lord!" I said, when we had reached the front gate. "Where"s your pony?"
"I sent him away," she said; "I"m walking. And you _don"t have_ to see me home."
"But if I want to? And anyway it"s too late and dark for you to walk home alone. Once upon a time there was a girl and her name was Little Red Riding Hood, and once as she was walking home in the dark, after an unusually heavy tea, she met a wolf. And he said, "Evening, Little Red Riding Hood," and she, though she was twittering with fear, and in no condition for running because of the immensely heavy tea, said, "Evening, Mr. Wolf.""
"Come along then!" said Evelyn. "Already you have persuaded me that Little Red Riding Hood is a pig, and that she is in great danger."
But we didn"t walk to the Fultons", we strolled. And the deep dusk turned to a velvety black night, soft and warm as a garment, and all spangled over with stars. It was one of the Aiken nights that smells of red cedar. We pa.s.sed more than one pair of soft-voiced darkies who appeared to lean against each other as they strolled, and from whom came sounds like the cooing of doves. Once far off we heard shouting and a pistol shot, and presently one came running and crossed our path far ahead, but whether a white man or a black we could not tell.
The lights in the Fultons" yard had not yet been switched on. In a recess cut from the foliage of a cedar tree, a white garden seat glimmered in the starlight.
"It"s too early to dress for dinner," I said, "and it"s a pity to go indoors."
Without a word Evelyn turned into the fragrant recess. The sudden acquiescence of one usually so disputatious, where I was concerned, troubled me a little, because I could not explain it to my satisfaction. It never had happened before. I could not see her face clearly enough to gather its expression, and so I put a cigarette in my mouth and struck a match. It missed fire, and Evelyn said, "Please don"t. Unless you want to very much."
"I don"t want to at all," I said; "it was just habit. Cedar smells better than tobacco, and that"s saying a good deal."
She did not answer and a few moments later I said:
"Any other couple, I suppose, seated on this bench in these surroundings would make a noise like the cooing of doves. But either you or I don"t say anything, like tonight walking home, or we fight.
And yet I think that if the whole truth were told we like each other quite a good deal. I admit that you often say hard things about me to my face, but I deny that you say them behind my back. Behind my back I have heard that you sometimes make valiant and comradely efforts to--well to make a silk purse out of a sow"s ear, so to speak."
"I"ve always remembered," she said, very gently, "and never forgotten how nice you were to me at my coming-out party, when I was so scared and young and all. I thought you were the most wonderful man in the world, and had the most understanding and the most tact."
She laughed softly, but not mirthfully.
"That night," she said; "if you"d asked me to run away with you I"d have done it like a shot."
"But tonight," I said, "if I so much as touched your hand, you"d turn into an icicle, and send me about my business with a few disagreeable truths to wear in my bonnet. And I think I know the reason. It"s because on that first night, even if I had been desperately in love with you, I wouldn"t have thought of asking you to run away with me, whereas now I can conceive of making such a proposition to somebody that I didn"t even love two bits" worth--for no better reason than that she was lovely to look at and that the night smelled of cedar."
"I"ve only been out seven years," said Evelyn; "seven years tonight."
"Many happy returns, Evelyn. I had no idea this was an anniversary."
"It doesn"t seem possible," she went on, "for a man to change his whole moral nature in seven years, and to boast about that change."
"I haven"t changed and I didn"t boast. If I ever knew what was right and what was wrong, I still know. The only difference is that I used to think it mattered a lot, and now I"m not so sure. I see good people suffer, and wicked people triumph; and I don"t think that everything is for the best in this best of worlds; I think most things are decidedly for the worst. Why should so many people be poor and sick and uncomfortable? Why should so many men marry the wrong girls, so many girls the wrong men? If we are suffering for our sins, well and good, but what was the use of making us so pesky sinful! You won"t, of course, but most people come back at one with one"s inability to comprehend--they always say "comprehend" the Great Design. As if they themselves comprehended said Great Design to perfection. If there _is_ a Great Design, no human being understands a jot of it; that"s certain.
Why be so sure then that something we don"t understand, and which may not even exist, is absolutely right and beautiful? Suppose it could be proved to us that there was no Great Design, and no Great Designer, that the world was the result of some blind, happy-go-lucky creative force, what would we think of the world then, poor thing? A poor woman with nothing to live for walks the streets that she may live; a rich woman with much to live for dies slowly and in great torture, of cancer. If we accept the Great Design we shouldn"t even feel pity for these two women, we should say of them merely, "How right! How beautiful!" But we do feel pity for them, and by that mere feeling of pity deny automatically the beauty of the Great Design, in the first place, and its subsequent execution. I can conceive, I think, of a lovely picture: you for instance, on a white bench, under a cedar in the starlight, listening to my delightful conversation, but I couldn"t possibly draw the picture, let alone paint it. The Great Design, it seems to me, had a tremendous gift for landscape, but fell down a little when it came to people."
"Archie," said Evelyn, "you talk like an irreverent schoolboy."
"Of course I do," I said; "I must. I can"t help myself. I am only playing my part in the Great Design. But if you believe in that then it is irreverent of you to say that my talk is anything but absolutely right, just, and beautiful. So there!"
She said nothing. And after a few moments of silence I began to feel sorry that I had talked flippantly.
"Evelyn," I said, "you mustn"t mind poor old me."
Almost unconscious of what I was doing I lifted her right hand from her lap, and held it in both mine. She made one feeble little effort to tug her hand away and then no more. In the heavens, a star slipped, and from the heavens fell, leaving a wake of golden glory. And it seemed after that sudden blazing as if the night was blacker than before.
I slid my left arm around her shoulders, and, unresisted, drew her a little toward me, until I could feel her heart beating strongly against mine.
Just then the latch of the house door turned with a strong oil click, the door swung open, and dark against the light illumination of the hall stood Lucy Fulton. As she stood looking and listening, the strong bell of the far-off courthouse clock began to strike. Long before the lights and last clanging concussion, Evelyn and I had withdrawn to the uttermost ends of our bench.
Then Lucy turned and went back into the house and shut the door after her.
Evelyn had risen.
"Good night," she said, but she did not hold out her hand.
"Good night," I said; "I"ve made you late. I"m sorry."
She started to speak, hesitated, and then said, very quietly, "Why did you make love to me just now?"
It seemed to me that the least I could do was to answer "Because I love you." But the words must have choked me, and with shame, I told her the truth.
"I made love to you," I said, "because I have only one life to live."
"I thought so," she said, still very quietly, and turned toward the house. But I had caught up with her in a mere crumb of time.
"I have been honest with you, Evelyn," I said; "will you be honest with me? I have told you why I made love to you. I want to know; it seems to me that I _ought_ to know. Why did you let me?"
"Oh," she said, "I shut my eyes and pretended that we were in the conservatory, seven years ago tonight."
"Pretended?"