You may be sure that that meeting in the little room where my mother wrote her letters was no meeting between a mistress and a servant, but between two honest women who in different ways loved the same man.

I was with Lucy while it took place, but certain gists of what was said and done have come to me, some from my mother, and some from Hilda.

My mother, it seemed, waived at once all those degrees of the social scale which separated them, took Hilda in her arms, kissed her, and held her while Hilda had what women call a "good cry." My mother is too proud and brave to cry, but she was unhappy without affectation. After the embrace and the cry they sat side by side on a little brocaded sofa and talked. My mother fortunately did not have to point out the social obstacles in the way of a match between Hilda and me, as there was never any question of such a match. Indeed, in the talk between them I was not at first mentioned. My mother took the position that Hilda was just a sweet, nice-minded girl who was very unhappy and needed comforting, and advice. First she made Hilda tell the story of her life. To be permitted to do this in the presence of a sincere listener and well-wisher is one of the greatest comforts to anyone.

"The poor child," said my mother, "has had such a drab, colorless, unhappy life that it made her almost happy to tell about it."

It seemed that Hilda wasn't "anybody" even for a servant. Her earliest recollections were of life in an English orphanage—one of those orphanages where the mothers of the orphans are still alive and there never were any fathers.

"But she's made herself think," my mother told me, "that her father was a gentleman—God save the mark!"

Well, she went into service when she was a "great" girl of fourteen or fifteen, and after various drab adventures in servitude came to this country and was presently sent to my mother on approval. She had left her last place in England because of a horrible butler. He was bowlegged and very old. He drank and made the poor frightened girls in the house listen to horrible stories. One found notes, printed notes, pinned on one's pincushion. "Have a heart. Don't lock your door tonight," and such like. Or a piece of plate would be missed and one would find it in one's bureau drawer, where the horrible old man had put it, and one dared not complain to the master lest upon carefully planned circumstantial evidence one be made out to be a thief.

It had been so wonderful coming to live in my mother's house. The servants were so different, so kind, so worthy. The servants' rooms were so clean and neat and well-furnished as the master's rooms. So much was done to make the servants comfortable and happy. Nobody had ever spoken crossly to one in my mother's house——"And, Oh, Mrs. Mannering, I feel so low and ashamed to have made so much trouble for you and Mr. Archie."

That was the first mention of my name.

"My dear Hilda, you mustn't feel ashamed because you've had a romance."

"Oh, it has been a sort of romance, hasn't it, Mrs. Mannering? But I never—never should have let it all come out. Because now I'll have to go away, and never even see him ever any more. I never should have let it come out, but I couldn't help it. And him always so kind and polite, and never once guessing all these years!"

Now my mother had not gone into that interview without a definite plan. She had heard that the Fultons—of all the people in this world whom it might have been!—were being abandoned by their waitress, and already by a brisk use of the telephone my mother had secured the place for Hilda.

It's a wonder that Hilda did not burst out laughing or screaming when she heard into whose service she was to go. I don't think she hated Lucy—yet. But for a woman who loved a man to take a place with the woman the man loved must have struck her as the most grotesque of propositions. But what could she do? Loyal to me, and to my secret, she wasn't going to give me away to my mother.

"But," she protested, "Mr. Archie goes so much to that house!"

"But now," said my mother, "don't you see, he won't go so much."

Indeed the dear manager felt that she had killed two birds with one stone. Lucy had a good place, and from now on there would be in the Fultons' house a living reason why a man of tact (like her beloved son!) should keep away. Alas, mother, there were other living reasons in that house which should have served to keep me away, and didn't.

I heard from my mother of the arrangement and was troubled. For once in her life of smoothing out other people's lives she had blundered seriously. Her measures had in them only this of success: that I found many excuses for not taking meals in the Fultons' house, and from that time forward saw Hilda very seldom. My mother gave her a lot of clothes, and quite a lot of money, I suppose, and the poor child for a while dropped out of sight. But not out of mind, I can tell you; for it worried me sick to feel that she was always in Lucy's house, watching and listening when she could.

I had not at this time had any great experience with the passion of jealousy. But a man who reads the newspapers, or has done his turn at jury duty in Criminal Sessions, cannot be ignorant of the desperate acts to which now and again it drives men and women.

Hilda, according to the slight knowledge I had of her character, was gentle and patient; she would be treated by Lucy as all Lucy's servants were, with the greatest tact and friendliness, and still the mere fact of her presence in that house filled me with forebodings. She would be in a position to make so much trouble, if ever anything should happen to start her on the war path. She had proved already that her moral nature was not superior to eavesdropping; already she had my secret by the ears, and one-sided and innocent though that secret may have appeared to her, it was not really a one-sided secret, and when she had got her clutch upon the other side, she could be almost as dangerous and mischievous as you please.

At best, Hilda was one more difficulty with which Lucy and I would have to contend.

It would have been wisest to tell Lucy all that I knew about Hilda. But you may have noticed with butterflies that they do not fly the straight line between two points; rather they fly in circles, with back-tracking, excursions, and gyrations, so that unless you have seen them start you cannot guess where they have started from, nor until the wings close and the insects come to a definite rest, are you in a position to know what their objective was.

In the face of our recently declared love for each other, any mention of Hilda's below-stairs passion for the "young master" seemed to me a blatant indelicacy. Almost it might have a quality of pluming and boasting, a gross acceptance of man's polygamous potentialities.

There would be time later for conversations in which future practicalities should take precedence over romantic fancies and protestations. Just now the Butterfly did not care a rap what should happen when winter came; for the present the world was filled with flowers—all his, and all containing honey.



XXI

"He broke up their home," is a familiar phrase. But few men in the act of breaking up a home realize the gravity of what they are about. I had gone a long way toward breaking up Fulton's happy family life without having the slightest notion that I was doing anything of the kind. When Lucy fell out of love with her husband, it was not because she had fallen in love with me. It was because she was going to. The lovely little sloop-of-war was merely clearing her decks for action. She didn't know this; I didn't. I frequented the house a little more than other men; that was all. And I frequented it not because of the charm exercised upon me by an individual member of the Fulton family, but of the charm which it exercised upon me as a whole. There was peace, there was happiness, there was love and understanding; there was poignant food for a lonely bachelor to chew upon. Remembering this how can I believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that everything in it is for the best? If I had not been fascinated by the Fultons as a family, I should never have become a frequenter of their house. If I had not been a frequenter of their house, I should never have split that family which as a whole so fascinated me with a wedge of tragedy. It is a horrid circle of thought.

When I learned that Lucy no longer loved her husband my heart had given no guilty bound of anticipation; instead it had turned lead-heavy for sheer sorrowing and sunk into my boots. The other day the Germans smashed the blue glass in Rheims Cathedral. A friend brought me a little fragment of this, and among my personal possessions I give it the place of first treasure. It's a more wonderful blue than Lucy's eyes, even. The light of heaven has poured through it to illumine the face of Joan of Arc. Its price is far above rubies and sapphires, and it seems to me the most wonderful treasure to have for my very own. But does this fact automatically make me glad that the Germans banged the great cathedral to pieces? It does not. Sometimes when I look at the light through my piece of blue glass I see red. And I hope that those who trained guns against the holy shrine and who are not already in hell, soon will be. And I could wish myself the hell of never having known Lucy's love, if by so doing I could restore the Fulton family to the blessed and tranquil state in which I first knew them.

I began this chapter with an idea of self-defense. How much of the tragedy am I responsible for? Upon my soul I can never answer that question to my satisfaction, and my conscience has put it to me thousands of times. I ought to have seen it coming. I didn't—at least I'm very sure that I didn't. But sometimes I am not so very sure of this. It is so obvious (now) that I ought to have seen it coming, that sometimes I persuade myself that I actually did. But how could I? For if I had, with any certainty at all, surely I would have been man enough to hide myself away somewhere, even at the ends of the earth. Love does not grow and wax great upon air. Solid food is needed in the occasional presence of the beloved. Suppose I had fled away the moment I learned that Lucy no longer loved her husband? Already her heart must have been turning to me, if only a little, but with the magnet which had caused it to turn that little removed from sight, first, and presently from mind, I believe that after a dazed numbed period that heart of hers might have swung back into its place.

Later when Fulton said to me, "But you ought to have seen it coming, and taken measures to see that it didn't come," I gave him my word that I hadn't seen it coming, and it was very obvious that he didn't believe me. Will anyone believe me? It doesn't matter. I am not even sure myself that I am telling the truth. But I know that I am trying to.

I had left my mother to her interview with Hilda, and betaken myself to the club. It was too early even to hope for a sight of Lucy. There were a number of men in the reading-room discussing the morning leader in that fair-minded and pithy sheet, the Charleston News and Courier, and one of these, eyeing me with a quizzical expression, said: "You look as if you had won a bet."

So already it showed in my face.

Well, I felt as if I had won many bets, and was only twenty, and that the course before me was all plain sailing. I was not yet in a condition to argue with myself about right and wrong. It did not seem worth while to look into the serried faces of difficulties and think how I could burst through them. It was more natural on that first morning after the discovery to look boldly over their heads to the rich open and peaceful country beyond.

A line from the "Brushwood Boy" kept occurring to me, "But what shall I do when I see you in the light?"

What should I do, what would Lucy do? Would there be people about or would we have the good luck to meet alone? Did she still love me, or had the dark night brought council and a change of heart? I knew that it hadn't. We were as definitely engaged to each other as if there was no husband in the way, no children, no law, no convention, no nothing. I was idiotically happy.

One thing only troubled me a little. Had Lucy's impulse to precipitate frankness already started any machinery of opposition into action? Had she told her husband? Knowing her so intimately, I could not make up my mind, but would have been inclined to take either end of the bet.

Suppose she had told him?

Wouldn't she give me a word of warning so that I could be prepared for anything he might say to me at our first meeting? I thought so, but could not be sure.

"If he does know," I thought, "I don't want to see him. Why don't I want to see him? Am I afraid of him? I am not afraid of him physically. I am stronger than he and more skillful, and I am not afraid of him mentally. He has a better mind than I have, but that is nothing to be afraid of. Well, then, why don't I want to see him? Oh, because it will be awkward and disagreeable; because he will look sick to death and irreparably injured. Because he will not do me justice, because he will think it is all my fault; and because he will require of me things which I shall not promise him."

I heard the telephone ringing in the distance. My heart bounded and I knew that Lucy was asking for me. I had risen and half crossed the room to meet the boy who came to tell me that I was indeed wanted on the phone. My heart began to thump in my breast, like a trunk falling downstairs. I glanced guiltily to see if the rumpus it seemed to me to be making was attracting notice. No. Every man was sunk in his newspaper. A moment later, I heard her voice in my ear.

"Listen, I'd like to see you. I'll be dressed and downstairs in ten minutes. Evelyn and John have driven to the golf club to get John's sticks. He's really going to Palm Beach. They start sometime soon after lunch. . . . How do I feel? . . . Oh, about the same as yesterday!"

I cannot describe the thrill or emotion which I managed to abstract from that last phrase. About the same as yesterday! I, too, felt like that, only more so.

"Good-by—for ten minutes."

She hung up suddenly. But I could not at once leave the telephone room. It seemed to me that I must be visibly trembling from head to foot.

My buggy was at the club door. First I drove home, raced up the stairs to my room, and from a closet in which I keep all sorts of hunting and fishing gear, snatched a fine deep-sea rod by Hardy of London, and a big pigskin box of tackle. I remembered to have heard John Fulton say that he had none of such things with him in Aiken, and I thought they might come in handy for him at Palm Beach. I cannot quite explain why it was, but I had the sudden desire to load the man with favors and presents.

It was only on the way to his house that the rod and the tackle-box struck me as an excellent excuse for so early a morning call. I left them on the table in the front hall, and marched boldly through the house, and unannounced into the living-room.

Of all the Lucy that turned swiftly from a window at the sound of my steps, and hurried to meet me, I saw only the great blue eyes.

She came into my arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to do, as if they had always been her comfort and her refuge. She was calm and fresh as a rose in the early morning. I could feel her heart beating tranquilly against mine. It seemed to me that the essence of every sweetest flower in the world had been used in her making. I felt that she was the most precious and defenseless thing in creation, and that me alone she trusted to cherish her and to defend her. It could not but be right to hold her thus closer and closer and to learn that her heart beat no longer tranquilly, but with a fluttering throbbing quickness like the heart of a wild bird that you have caught and hold in your hand.

All this while my lips were pressed to hers and hers to mine. Then from the playground door rose in lamentation over some tragic-seeming mishap of play, the voice of Hurry.

Our kiss ended upon the shrill note of woe and protest. But still we looked each other in the eyes, and she said: "What are we going to do about it?"



XXII

She hadn't told her husband.

She had been on the point of telling him, but for once her great gift of frankness had failed her. She had not feared any storm that might burst upon her own head; it was only that her heart had rebelled against adding to the weight of care and sorrow which her husband already carried. Let him have what pleasure he could out of the trip to Palm Beach. When he returned she could do her telling.

The fact that she had not told, and was not going to for some time, troubled her. She felt, she said, as if she was lying. She made it very clear that her reticence was for his sake, not for her own.

Personally I rejoiced in the failure of her frankness. Trouble enough was bound to come of our love for each other; at best there would be weary months of waiting for old knots to be untied before there could be any question of tying new ones. There would be at least one dreadful interview to be gone through with John Fulton; many readjustments of friendships, some friends would side with him, some with her; and last and worst, that moment when I should have to tell my mother and she would grow old before my eyes.

"There'll be heaps of little worries and troubles, Lucy, dear," I said; "bound to be. But we'll not begin to think about them till John comes back from Palm Beach. If it's wrong for us to love each other at all, at least we are going to make it as right as we can. We owe ourselves all the unalloyed happiness we can lay hands on. So—let's pretend."

We sat on the sofa in the Fultons' living-room holding hands, like two children.

"Let's pretend," I said, "that there aren't any complications; that time has gone backward ten years; that we've just gotten engaged; that there's nobody to disapprove and be unhappy about it. I can pretend true, if you can."

"It's easy for me," said Lucy; "I was never any good at remembering or looking forward, never any good at anything that wasn't going on right there and then. Oh, I'm so glad it's you!"

"Why, Lucy?"

"Because you're not a bit like me. If you were like me, we wouldn't think of what would happen later on, we'd just go away together. It's so complicated and foolish to think we can't. Laws and people make such a snarl of things. I wouldn't try to untangle it, I'd just cut it all to pieces, and then I suppose we'd be sorry."

"Yes, dear, we'd be very, very sorry. And the world would make us suffer almost more than our love could make up to us for. So we'll just have to pretend for a while."

"And besides," she said in a startled sort of way, "I might fall out of love with you, mightn't I? Oh, I've fallen out of love lots of times—then with John, and maybe I'll fail you. You must know that I'm not any good. But even if I'm not, I do love you. Oh, I do."

"Do you?"

"And I trust you so. There's nobody so kind and thoughtful and strong."

It is pleasant for an unkind, thoughtless weak man to be told such untruths by the woman he loves. And for a few moments I imagined I had the qualities that she had wished upon me, nay, loved upon me. For a few moments there was no kindness, no thoughtfulness, no strength of which I was incapable.

"When your arms are around me I know that nothing can hurt me."

I was holding her in my arms now. But there came in through the hall a pattering of little feet, and by the time Jock and Hurry had burst into the room I was at a garden window looking out, and Lucy had caught up from her work bag that Penelope's web of a silk necktie upon which she so often worked, and made no progress.

"Has Favver come back?"

"Why, no, you little goose. He's gone to Palm Beach. We took him to the train. He won't be back tomorrow, nor the day after. Nor the day after that," and she halted only when she had come to about the tenth tomorrow. "And now make your manners to Mr. Mannering."

In fiction children and dogs have an intuitive aversion for the villain of the piece. But Jock and Hurry had none for me. Indeed they liked me very much and looked to me for treats, and rides round the block, and romping games in which I fled and they pursued. But then it was only since yesterday that I had become a genuine villain. Had their intuition made the discovery? I think I was a little anxious.

But they rushed upon me, and we were to remain for the present at least, so it seemed, the same old friends.

It flashed across my mind that some day in the not far future these children would live under my roof; surely the courts would award them to Lucy; and I highly resolved to be a genuine father to them through thick and thin. Somehow or other they must always be fond of me. Whatever I had to leave when I died they must share equally with any children that I might happen to have of my own. Children? I caught Lucy's eyes. We looked at each other across the tops of those children's heads, and read each other's thoughts. I know this, because when Jock and Hurry had been sent away, I said: "Did you know what I was thinking of just then? I was thinking, wondering, hoping——"

"I couldn't love you," she said quietly, "and not want what you want and hope what you hope."

"Lucy!"

I touched her hair with the tips of my fingers.

"What, dear?"

"There was never anyone in the world so wonderful as you, so beautiful, so generous."

"I suppose it's nice to have you think so." She looked with great contentment at the necktie.

"You haven't told me when Schuyler is coming."

"He's coming tomorrow."

"That's fine. But it will have its funny side."

"Why?"

"Well, I shall have to tell him all about us, won't I? And we were schoolmates together, and I think telling him I love his sister and want to marry her and asking his consent has its funny side. He'll be on our side anyway, Lucy."

"I'm afraid nobody will think it's as nice as we do."

"Well, of course, it isn't as nice for anybody as it is for us."

"Will you tell him right away?"

"Couldn't I wait a few days? Somehow I like to bask in the sunshine of just you knowing and just me knowing. What do you think?"

She gave me a wonderful look. "I'm not here to think—I'm here to take orders from my dear."

I let five days go before I told Schuyler. They were five wonderful days, during which we borrowed no trouble from the past or the future; five days during which we agreed to cross our bridges only when we came to them. On that fifth day I received a long letter from Harry Colemain dated Palm Beach.

MY DEAR FELLOW [he wrote]: At the risk of losing you I think that I must tell you something of the experiences that I have been having with John Fulton. To begin with he told me about his wife's failure of affection and their domestic smash-up. He told me going down in the train. We shared the drawing-room. Every time I was jolted into wakefulness, I found him wide awake. For five days I don't think he has slept a wink. He looks parched and dry like a mummy. He has tried very hard to be a cheerful companion, and we have fished and swum and gone through the motions of all the Palm Beach recreations. But his mind is never for one single instant clear of his troubles. We have become very intimate. I think he had to talk or die. He apologizes very often for having talked and continuing to do so, but throws himself upon what he calls my mercifulness. He talks in a circle, always coming back to the questions why and what. Why has it happened? What has he done to deserve it? He searches his memory for reasons as you look for bits of gold in a handful of sand. Yes, he was very cross once about some money, but that was years before she stopped loving him. It couldn't be that, etc., etc.

Our rooms are separated by a little parlor. I'm a sound sleeper, and hate being disturbed, but I have given him positive orders to wake me if he gets lonely and wants to talk. He's only obeyed these orders once. And then he didn't exactly obey them, he waked me because he couldn't control his nerves. He couldn't sleep, as usual, so he started to get up, and just when he got his legs over the side of the bed he began to laugh. It was his laughter that waked me. By the time I was wide awake the laughter sounded very ugly, and by the time I got to him it was mixed with awful sobs that came all the way from his diaphragm and seemed as if they were going to tear him to pieces. I turned on the light, but the moment I saw his face I turned it off. It isn't decent for one man to see another have hysterics. We haven't spoken of the thing since, but he knows that I came in and sat by him and felt horribly sorry for him. I can read this in his eye. And I think he would do anything in the world for me. The next morning his voice was very hoarse; sometimes a woman's voice is that way after she's paid somewhat over-handsomely for being a woman. I am trying to convey to you the impression that the man is in a terribly bad way, and through no possible fault of his own, which must make his torment harder to bear.

What I think about Lucy Fulton is simply this: that she ought to be cowhided until she sees which side her bread is buttered on. And this is where you come in. You're great friends with her, and have a lot of influence with her. John says so. She admires what she is pleased to call your judgment. Can't you make her see that just because she has been spoiled, and given all the best of everything, she's gotten bored, and is letting one of the best men in this world eat his heart out with grieving? She ought to lie to him. She ought to telegraph him to come back, and when she gets him back she ought to make him think that she still loves him. Every woman has at heart one chance to be decent. This is hers.

Another thing. John has betrayed his notion that Lucy sees too much of you for her own good, at this time. He doesn't even imagine that she cares for you in any way that she shouldn't or you for her; but he does wish—well, that you'd gone to California when you planned to, etc., etc. Now the season's pretty nearly over, and I know that a few weeks one way or the other never did matter to you and won't now. Of course, it has its ridiculous side, but I really think it would comfort John Fulton quite a little if he heard that you had left Aiken. You see he's half crazy with grief and insomnia, and he's got it in his head that if Lucy had fewer other people to amuse her, she might get bored again and in sheer boredom turn again to him. But just use your influence with Lucy, if you've got any. I tell you on the honor of a cynical and skeptical man, that if things go on the way they are going, I think John Fulton will die of a broken heart. You see, he's had too much—more than you and I can possibly imagine—and that much he has now lost. If he isn't to get back any portion of it, he'll curl up and die.

Hoping you're having a fine time and fine weather,

Always your affectionate friend, H.C.

Well, the days of basking in the sunshine on top of the powder magazine were over.

After some thought, I went to Lucy's brother and gave him Harry's letter to read. He had slept late, and I found him dressing.

Schuyler was, of course, deeply troubled and concerned. That he himself hadn't had "an inkling of this—not an inkling," seemed for some minutes quite important to him, for he made the statement a number of times. Then, for he was energetic, and, like Lucy, oftenest in a hurry, he said:

"The thing to do is for us to take this letter to Lucy, stand over her while she reads it, and then throw hot shot into her. Why it's a damned shame! John's been twice as good a husband as Lucy's been a wife. And now she does this to him." Then something appeared to strike Schuyler's sense of humor, for he burst out laughing. "And he's getting jealous of you!" he said gleefully. "When did you first become a snake in the grass?"

"Perhaps you'll end by calling me that," I said gravely. "Stop laughing, Schuyler. A very sad thing has happened and a very wonderful thing. Lucy and I——"

His face became instantly as grave as mine. "Lucy and you?"

"We hope that you'll be on our side."

"And John doesn't know?"

"You see by Harry's letter that although he doesn't know, his intuition is trying to tell him."

"How long's this been goin' on?"

"It just came, Schuyler, happened, was—not many days ago. We didn't see it coming, and——"

He interrupted sharply, his eyes grown suddenly cold. "I want to know if you have still a sort of right to be in this house?"

"Why—yes—I think so."

"Think—don't you know?"

He gave a harsh short laugh.

"I know what you are driving at, of course. We care about each other. If that's wrong, that's all that is wrong."

"You take a weight off me," he said, and his tone was more friendly.

"You always maintained that love was its own justification, Schuyler?"

"And I've heard you maintain that it wasn't. Now we seem to have swapped beliefs."

He turned to his dressing-table and tied his tie. While so doing he muttered: "Pleasant vacation in sunny South."

And then was silent. I could not think of anything to say. Having finished dressing he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and began to pace about the disordered room.

"Shall we go out in the sun?" I suggested.

"A dark cave would be more in keepin' with my feelings. Let's stop here a little and talk. What's the idea anyway?"

"Why, the usual idea, I suppose."

"John to give Lucy a divorce, you and Lucy to marry shortly after, and Jock and Hurry to go to hell! I think less than nothing of the usual idea. To begin with, why should John give Lucy a divorce? She's the one that's done all the harm. I know I'm her brother. It only helps me to see her character clearer than other people do. Well, say he isn't the fool I think he is. Say he won't give her a divorce? What then?"

"Hadn't we better cross that bridge when we come to it?"

"In the usual way, I suppose. No. I'm too old-fashioned to like usual ways of doing things. Furthermore, I like you and Lucy too much. I don't want to see her life ruined, and John after all is a manufacturer of ammunition. How about crossin' the bridge and findin' him on the other side with a big bang-stick in his hand?"

I shrugged my shoulders, though at heart I was not indifferent to the picture which Schuyler had conjured up.

"Oh," said he, "what a damned mess! Come, we'll talk to Lucy."

I went with him most unwillingly. And I thought it good fortune that we did not find her alone, but with Evelyn, Dawson and the children.

Schuyler kissed his sister good morning with warm, brotherly affection and gave her a playful pat or two on the back.

"All we need," he said cheerfully, "is old John, and a girl apiece for Archie and me, to be a happy family party."

He made goat's eyes at Evelyn and Dawson. The latter blushed. But the former returned his glance with a fine and mischievous indifference.

"Now, people," Schuyler continued, "I'm on my vacation. I've plenty of energy, and I'm open to suggestion. You, Evelyn, do you want to ride with me or with Dawson?"

"I want to ride with you, but I'm going to play golf with Dawson."

"When?"

"We were just lingering to say good morning."

She rose a little languidly, and I perceived with misgivings that she and Dawson were really about to depart.

"Well," said Schuyler, "any time you feel like shakin' Dawson, just put me wise, there's a good fellow!"

When Dawson and Evelyn had gone, Schuyler proceeded to get rid of the children. He gave them fifty cents apiece, and said that if he didn't see them or hear them for half an hour they could keep the money.

"Are you trying to get this room all to yourself?" asked Lucy. "Do you want Archie and me to vanish, too?"

"No," said Schuyler; "much as you and Archie may wish to, I want nothing of the kind. Lucy, I think you'd better telegraph John to come home, don't you?"

"I've told Schuyler, Lucy," I said.

"And that's a good thing," said Schuyler; "because I don't have to take sides. I like you all. You and Archie have to take your side, and John has to take his, naturally."

Lucy, her hands folded in her lap, looked bored and annoyed.

"A lot of talk isn't going to help any," she said.

"For certain reasons, Lucy," said Schuyler, "you and Archie are just now as blind as two bats. You don't see what you are doing, and you don't see what you are up against."

"I've only one life," said Lucy, "and it's my own."

"But it isn't," said Schuyler; "you gave it to John. I'd be mightily hurt and shocked to find out that you were an Indian giver."

"John will give my life back to me when he knows."

"Well, find out if he will or not. Send for him. Tell him what's happened."

"I think that would be best, Lucy," I said.

"Then, of course, I'll send," she said. "But——"

"John, you know," said Schuyler, "may not take you two very seriously. He may think that Lucy's feelings for you, Archie, are just a passing whim. Upon the grounds of his own experience with Lucy, he would be within his rights to feel that way. Why not," his face brightened into a sort of cheerfulness, "why not test yourselves a little? You go north, Archie, and wait around, and then, after a while, if you and Lucy feel the same, it will be time enough to tell John. It's all been too sudden for you to feel sure of yourselves. It isn't as if neither of you had ever been in love before and gotten over it. As a matter of cold fact, you've both been tried before now and found wanting. So I think you ought to go slow—for John's sake. He's the fellow that's been tried and that hasn't been found wanting."

It was obvious that Lucy did not like her brother's suggestion at all, for she rose suddenly, her hands clenched, and exclaimed:

"Oh, you don't understand at all. How can I go on living with a man I don't love? How can you ask me to be so false to myself and to Archie——"

"And to Jock and Hurry?" asked Schuyler gently.

She showed no emotion at the mention of these names.

"Don't they count for anything?" persisted Schuyler.

"Of course they count for something, so does poor John. Do you think it's any pleasure to have hurt him so? But is it my fault if they don't count enough?"

Here she came swiftly to my side, and slid her hand under my arm and clung to it. "They count," she said, "but they don't count enough." And she turned to me. "You are all that counts. I'd give up my life for you, and I'd give up my children and everything. You know that."



There was a long silence. Then Schuyler, speaking very slowly, said: "You'd go away with him, and never see Jock and Hurry again, not be able to go to them when they were sick, not to be at little Hurry's wedding when she grows up and gets married. . . . For God's sake!"

"Now do you realize that I'm in earnest?" she cried.

Schuyler turned quietly on his heel and left the room. After a while we heard his voice in the distance, mingling joyfully with the voices of Jock and Hurry.

Lucy's face, all tears now, was pressed to my breast.

"You are giving up too much for me, my darling," I said; "I'm not worth it."

"But if you went out of my life I'd die!"

"I won't go out of your life, Lucy. But there are lives and lives. We could meet and be together to gather strength for the times we had to be apart."

At that she had a renewal of crying, and cried for a long time.

"It isn't right for Jock and Hurry to run any risk of losing you," I said, "and love—Lucy—love with renunciation is a wonderful thing, and a strong thing."

"I'm not strong. I don't want to be strong. I just want to give and give and give."

"We could have our own life apart from everybody else—but not a hidden guilty life—a life to be proud of—a life in which you would strengthen me for my other life and I would strengthen you for yours."

She stopped crying all at once and freed herself from my arms. "Then you don't want me?"

"I want you."

She lifted her hands to my shoulders. "Suppose we find that we can't stand a life of love—with renunciation?"

"At least we would have tried to do what seemed to make for the happiness of the most people."

"And you think I ought to live on with John, as—as his wife?"

"No, I couldn't bear that—but as his friend, Lucy, as the mother of Jock and Hurry. Oh, no," I said; "I couldn't bear it, if—if you weren't faithful to me."

"And you would be faithful to me?"

"In thought and deed."

"And we'd just be wonderful friends?"

"Lovers, too, Lucy. We couldn't help that."

And I kissed her on the forehead. And at that moment I felt very noble, and that the way of life which I had proposed was a very fine way of life, and possible of being lived.

"Then," she said, "John mustn't know. He must never know. It will always be our secret. But then Schuyler knows."

"When I tell him what we mean to do, he won't tell."

And the first chance I had I told Schuyler. And finished with, "So don't tell John, will you?"

"I'll see how happy Lucy manages to make him, first," said Schuyler. "But if you think he won't find out all by himself, you're mistaken. It's a rotten business all around."

And he looked at me with a kind of comical amazement. "Think of Lucy carin' more for you than for Jock and Hurry!" he exclaimed. "I suppose you regale her from time to time with episodes from your past life? . . . Well, if I didn't think you'd both get tired of each other before long, I'd feel worse. One thing, though, if I promise you that I won't give you away to John, will you promise me for yourself and for Lucy that you won't take any serious step, without telling me first, and giving me a chance to try to dissuade you?"

"As there is to be no question of a serious step," I said, "I promise."



XXIII

Ours was to be one of the most beautiful and beneficial loves of history. Almost we fell in love with our new way of loving. It had, we felt, a dignity and a purpose lacking in other loves. To look each other in the eyes, and feel that in a moment of strength, spurred by pity for those who had no such love as ours to sustain them, we had renounced each other, was a state of serenity and peace.

It added to the beauty of our renunciation that it claimed no luster of publicity, but had been made in quiet privacy. No one, we thought, will ever know; yet it will have been strong and pure, so that the world cannot but be the better for it.

We delighted for a while in our supreme renunciation as children delight in a new toy. And even now I can look back upon that time and wish that there could have been a little more substance to the shadow. It was a time of wonderful and sweet intimacy. We were to tell each other everything. There was delight in that. There was the delight of looking ahead and planning the meetings that should be ours in other places, until at last John himself came to realize that in our loving friendship was nothing unbeautiful, or unbeneficent, and meetings would happen when or where we pleased, the world silenced by the husband's approval.

So I did not take Harry Colemain's well-meant advice, and leave Aiken.

For a while it would suffice John to know that Lucy intended to stand by him and be the keeper of his house; to put his interests first, and to make up to him in dutifulness and economy for the love which she could not but reserve. Yes, indeed! Riding slowly through the spring woods, I made bold to preach a gospel of new life to her, and she listened very meekly, like a blessed angel, and she felt sure that from me she would derive the will and the strength. Mostly it was a gospel of economy that I preached and how best she might help her husband back upon his feet. And before his return from Palm Beach she had made a beginning. She bought a book to keep accounts in, and she got together all the bills she could lay hands on, and added them up to an appalling total (several, for it came different each time) and she stacked the bills in order of their pressingness, with the requests for payment from lawyers and collectors on top, and she felt an unparalleled glow of virtue and helpfulness.

And one day she took Jock and Hurry in the runabout (Cornelius Twombly behind) and drove to the station to welcome John home. How sweet the sight of those three faces must have seemed to him after absence! Indeed they had seemed very sweet to me as I looked into them just before they drove stationward. I was not to show up for two or three days. That was one compromise on Harry Colemain's advice. It would show John that Lucy and I were not entirely engrossed in each other's society. It would give him time to turn around and see how he liked the fact that Lucy was going to stick to him, and in many ways be a better wife to him. It would give me an opportunity to see, and be seen by many people. It would, in short, be a beginning of knocking on the head and silencing most of the talk that there had been about Lucy and me.

When you have a secret you might as well do your best to keep it.

So I did not see John Fulton for three days after his return from Palm Beach, and then by accident.

He had stopped at my father's house to leave the rod and tackle-box which I had loaned him, and I, happening to be in the hall, opened the door myself, and went out to speak with him.

"Have a good time?" I asked.

The man looked so sick that I pitied him.

"Mechanically, yes. I went through the motions," he said. "That's a beautiful rod. It was the most useful thing I had along. Going to the club? I'll drive you."

"Will you? Thanks. I'll just put these things in the hall."

We drove slowly toward the club.

"Glad to be back?"

"Very. I couldn't have stayed away from Lucy and the kids much longer, even if I'd been held."

He laughed gently.

"Lucy," he said, "must have thought that I wasn't ever coming back. She's been trying to put the house in order."

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, finding out how much money's owed, and making a beginning of tying up loose ends."

"Kids all right? I haven't set eyes on 'em for three or four days."

"Yes, the kids are fine," and he added, after a pause, "and Lucy's fine too."

There were several men in the club and they made John heartily welcome, and told him how much better he looked than when he went away. As a matter of fact he looked much worse.

We all had tea together and asked questions about Palm Beach, and if he had seen so and so, and if he'd brought any money away from the gambling place, and what was new, and amusing, etc.

"Do you know," he said all of a sudden, "there was one very interesting thing that happened. Anybody mind if I talk shop?"

Nobody did; so he went on: "I had a telegram from a Baron Schroeder asking if it would be convenient for me to see him. He came all the way down to Palm Beach, talked to me all the time between trains, and flew away north again. He wanted to know how many rifle cartridges I could make in a year, at a price, a very round price, how many in five years. He wanted to know if I could convert any of my plant into a manufactory for shrapnel, and so on. What interested me is that he should take all that trouble over a small concern like mine. It looks as if someone saw a time when there would be a great dearth of ammunition. Two days ago Schroeder had gone away. I was braced, while in swimming, by a Russian gentleman. He apologized and plied me with the same sort of questions; I gave him the same sort of offhand answers that I had given Schroeder, and then I asked him what it was all about, and I told him about Schroeder without mentioning names. He said he could only guess, but that if I would sign a contract he would keep my plant running full for five years. It looks, doesn't it, as if somebody had decided to change the map of Europe, and as if others suspected the design?"

"Well, what came of it? Did you land a contract? Tell more."

"Nothing has come of it yet. But I think something will. I'm to meet the Russian in New York shortly."

"Why the Russian? The Baron saw you first."

"The Russian had better manners," said Fulton simply. "I think he liked me, and I know I liked him!"

Fulton asked me to dinner, but I refused, and so it was nearly four days before I saw Lucy again. In the meanwhile Harry Colemain told me more about the Palm Beach trip. The ammunition inquiries had, it seemed, strengthened Fulton's nerves; there had been no repetition of the hysterics.

"A man," Harry said, "must be even more down and out than Fulton not to be braced by a prospect of good business. From what he told me, if the contract goes through, he stands to make a fortune."

"Is there anything peculiarly good about the Fulton cartridges, or is Europe just out to gather up all the ammunition she can?"

"It looks rather like a sudden general demand. But of course nobody knows anything except the insiders. Fulton says if the contract goes through he can die any time and be sure that his family will be well provided for. That feeling will stiffen his backbone. But you haven't told me if you said anything to Lucy?"

I had been dreading that question as one which could not be answered with complete frankness. I don't enjoy lying. Not that my moral sense revolts, but because I am lazy. Lying calls for deliberate efforts of invention.

"In a general way, yes," I evaded. "But her own good sense has come to the rescue. John's absence gave her a chance to see how she really felt about things. She won't leave him. Indeed, she'll try to make up to him in every way she can for her failure of affection."

"If she does that," said Harry, "I daresay the affection will come back. The more you benefit a person the more you like that person. The more you fail in your duty to a person, the less you like that person. I'm delighted with what you say. With all her charm and beauty she can make him happy if she tries."

"I think it's not a question of charm and beauty," I said. "It's a question of keeping house for him, and being a good mother to the children, and being loyal to him and them."

"There are reservations?"

"She doesn't love him."

"Oh," said Harry scornfully, "that sort of thing won't work."

"We know a good many cases where that sort of thing seems to work."

"It only works when the husband acts like a natural man. Fulton won't. For him only Lucy is possible. There can be no substitute. No. In this case it won't work. He's too young and she's too good-looking."

"Then it won't work," I said shortly.

"She makes me sick," said Harry. "She gets her board and lodging and her clothes and spending money from him, and love and protection, and—Oh, it isn't as if there'd never been anything between them. After all, as far as he's concerned, she's no novice."

"The moment she stopped loving him she became spiritually separated from him."

"Spiritually be damned!" exclaimed Harry. "Don't talk to me. There are women in New York who to keep from starvation, will make love to any man that comes along, for a pittance. They do the very best they can to earn the money. I can't help admiring 'em. But your fashionable married woman, she's too refined, too delicately souled, too spiritual to do anything but eat herself sick on her man's money and spend him into a hole. It's bad enough to be a prostitute who plays the game, but it's a damned sight worse to be a prostitute who doesn't."

"I'm not going to get angry with you, Harry. We've been through too much together. But I think you have said enough. Lucy is one of the finest, purest-minded women in the world."

"Then she ought to be her husband's wife, or get out. If she's not his wife, she's no business grafting on him for board and lodging and pocket money. How long does a pure-minded, good-looking woman keep off the streets if she can't raise the wind any other way? Not long. And how many men can she graft on? Plenty of 'em—once. But not twice. The word goes round about her. 'She's a beauty to look at,' says the word, 'but she doesn't earn her money.'"

"Many marriages," I said, "have to be re-arranged and compromised."

"Don't say have to be, say are."

"Harry," I said with great firmness, "the country needs rain like the devil."

After a moment, good humor returned to his face. He said; "You've just won an argument. I also am dry as a bone."



XXIV

"This isn't the last ride together," said Lucy, "but almost. This time we are really going."

We had turned into Lovers' Lane, outward-bound, the ponies walking.

"John will have to be in New York for many days about this Russian contract, and he doesn't want to take the long trip back. So we're all going together."

"I shan't stay here very long after you've gone."

"No, you mustn't."

"We'll have lots of nice parties in New York."

"John says he's going to sell our house here, or rent it, or get rid of it somehow."

"Why?"

"Because he's been so unhappy in it. He says unless his whole mind is made over we'll never come to Aiken again."

She drew a long breath, and her eyes roved among the great pine trees on either side of the road as if she wished to impress them forever upon her memory.

"I love it all so much," she said simply.

"I'm so sorry," I said; "and it means that I won't ever be coming back for more than a minute. And I love it, too."

"We're to spend the summer in Stamford to be near the works. Stamford!"

"You'll find lots of people to like, and bully sailing and swimming."

"And bully spells of white-hot, damp weather, and bully big mosquitoes."

"It ought to be cheap."

"Very cheap."

Then we both laughed. Then we were silent.

"Tell me," I said, "how is the great compromise working?"

"I don't know. I told him how I'd made up my mind to stick by the ship, so that there wouldn't be any scandal, or anything to break up his home, or hurt the children, and how I was going to be better about money, and he said, 'Very well, Lucy, we'll try it for a while, but I don't think compromises are much good.' He wants me to do all I'm trying to do, and be his wife too. I thought he'd—Oh, I thought he'd be pleased and grateful—instead of that he tries to be cold to me, and is very sharp and stern."

"It takes time to settle down to any new modus vivendi."

"Well," she cried, "I'm not doing it because I want to, am I? I'm only doing it for his sake. I'm doing every blessed thing I can to save the situation; and if there are things I simply can't do—why he ought to be generous and understand. Oh, I know it isn't going to work! And all the time when he isn't being cold and stern, he—he's trying to make me love him again, and come back to him. And right in the middle of that he'll fly into a rage, and say that I ought to be compelled to behave like a rational human being."

"But he wouldn't compel you to do anything you didn't want to do, Lucy. Trust him for that."

"I don't know. He's so different from the way he used to be. Sometimes I'm afraid. Sometimes I am afraid to be alone in the same house with him. If I didn't have you to back me up, and give me strength I'd—but it can't last long. I know it can't. And I don't know that it's worth trying."

"You are still fond of him, Lucy?"

"And sorry for him, Oh, so sorry. But fondness and sorrow aren't everything."

"It will be better when he has the new contract to occupy him, and keep him away. It won't be an all-day affair then. And all the time you and I'll be meeting to talk things over, and borrow strength to go on with. It isn't easy for me either, dear. And of course, if after trial we find it won't work, why then it will be our duty to ourselves to cut the Gordian knot."

She turned toward me and we looked into each other's eyes for a long time.

"I've given him all I can," she said. "It isn't enough. It never will be enough. Oh, if there are knots to be cut, let's cut 'em and have done with it."

I dropped my reins, and leaning wide, took her in my arms and kissed her many times.

"We are romantic children," I said, "to think that there could be any other way. God bless you, my darling, we'll cut all the knots, and begin life all over again, and always be together."

She became then wonderfully cheerful and excited, and riding always at a walk, no longer on roads, but through the deep woods, we made our plans for the future.

Nothing was to be said to John until we were in a bigger place than Aiken. The bigger the place the smaller the scandal. I offered (with grave misgivings) to do the telling; but Lucy would not have it so. "It's his right," she said, "to know from me." John having been told, would, we felt sure from what we knew of his character, be willing to do the right thing. It wasn't as if he had been dishonored in any way. He would even be grateful to us for having been strong-minded and aboveboard. It would hurt him terribly. Yes, but a sudden final hurt was better than the lingering sickness from which he was now suffering. There would, of course, be no question of alimony. My father, much as he might disapprove of the whole affair, was not only fond of me, but fond of Lucy, and he would see us through.

It would take a long while to get a divorce. That was the darkest cloud on the horizon. But we must face that cheerfully; our reward would be all the greater when it came.

That John would be unwilling to give up Lucy even when he knew that she loved someone else never occurred to us. He belonged to that class of men whose code is to give the women all the best of everything. He was too fond of Lucy to wish to see her hurt. And if he wouldn't give her a divorce, hurt she would be, for in that unlikely event we were determined to jump on the nearest steamer and sail away for parts unknown.

"Why not come in?" said Lucy, when we had finished our ride. "You haven't been near the house for days, so it won't be very noticeable."

"All right," I said, "for a minute."

It was between dusk and dark. The lights had not been turned on in the hall. The opportunity seemed rare and sweet. We stood for one brief fleeting moment closely enlaced—and swiftly separated, and stood breathing fast, and listening.

Lucy was the first to make up her mind.

She stepped swiftly to the dining-room door and flung it open. She was in time to see the trim shoulders and white cap of a servant disappearing from the dining-room into the pantry.

"Who was it?"

"My new waitress."

"Hilda?"

Lucy smiled grimly. "She'll leave tomorrow."

"Don't discharge her. She might tell. Perhaps she didn't see."

I joined Lucy in the dining-room, closed the door, knelt and looked back into the hall through the keyhole.

"Could she see?"

I rose to my feet and nodded.

"He mustn't hear from anyone but me," said Lucy. "I'll speak to her."

But Hilda was not in the pantry.

"I don't think she'll tell," I said, "and after all what does it matter? Let's take a chance."

Mentally I resolved to communicate with Hilda at the earliest possible moment, and to use whatever influence I had upon her. So I was no sooner in my room at home than I took the receiver from my private telephone and gave the number of the Fultons' house. After an interval I heard Hilda's voice.

"It's Mr. Mannering, Hilda."

"Yes, sir."

"I want to see you about something important."

"I know."

So she knew, did she?

"Can you meet me at ten o'clock tonight?"

"Where?"

"Leave the house at ten sharp, and walk toward the town; I'll be watching for you. You'll come?"

"Yes, sir."



XXV

Near the Fultons, fronting on the street, is a large overgrown yard that has never been built on. Here in the shadow of a great cedar tree I waited and watched for Hilda. On the stroke of ten I saw her coming. She had a neat, brave, brisk way of walking, her head well up, as if she was afraid of nothing. A few moments later I hailed her from under my cedar, and after glancing up and down the street to see if anyone was watching, she joined me there.

It was very dark. I could just make out her face. She was breathing fast and had one hand pressed upon her heart.

"Thank you for coming, Hilda. You saw Mrs. Fulton and me in the hall?"

"And heard you."

"I'm throwing myself on your mercy, Hilda. Mrs. Fulton and I love each other. When we get back to New York we are going to tell Mr. Fulton. He will let Mrs. Fulton divorce him, and then we are to be married. You'll be my friend, won't you, and not tell? There's been nothing wrong, Hilda——"

"Only kisses."

"But if he found out from anyone but Mrs. Fulton—you see he isn't very well and he might do something crazy—something tragic. You see if you told him what you'd seen, he might act before anyone had a chance to explain."

I was trying to make the matter sound more serious than I felt it to be. Whatever happened, I did not think that Fulton was the kind of man who forgets his education and his civilization, but I wanted, if I could, to frighten Hilda into secrecy.

"You'd not want to get me all shot up, would you, Hilda?"

She was silent for a time, as if weighing pros and cons in her head. Then she looked up at me and said:

"When I saw, I didn't do anything crazy."

"Hilda," I said, "he has to be hurt and you have to be hurt. That's always been the way with love—it always will be."

She was silent again. Then she said in a low voice that carried with it a certain power to thrill: "He'd die for her. And I'd die for you. But he's only a worn-out glove, and I'm only a common servant. She thinks she'd die for you, and you think you'd die for her. But you're both wrong. A woman that won't stand by her babies isn't going to die for anyone, not if she knows it. A man that gets to your age without marrying any of the women he's gone with isn't going to die for anyone if he can help it. Wait till you've crossed her selfish will a few times and see how much she'll die for you; wait till she begins to use you the way she used him. A whole lot you'll want to die for—her—then——"

"I can't listen to this, Hilda."

"You will listen, or else I'll scream and say you attacked me—a whole lot she'll feel like dying for you then. Servants have eyes and ears and hearts. There's servants in that house that know how things used to be, who see how things are now, since you came philandering around. And do you know what those servants think of her, and what I think of her for the way she's treated him? Oh, they like her well enough because she's gentle and easy-going, and good-tempered and easy to get on with; but there isn't a servant in that house would change characters with her. We think she's the kind of woman that's beneath contempt—lazy, selfish, spendthrift—always pampering number one—and going about the world looking like a sad, bruised lily. Do you think the servants in that house don't know all about your goings and comings, and the life you've led, the harm you've done and didn't have to do, the good you might have done, and didn't?"

"But, Hilda——"

She motioned me to be silent. Her ears, sharper than mine, or more attentive, had heard voices. They were negro voices, a man's and a woman's. We drew deeper into the shadow of the cedar.

"So you got no mo' use for me, nigger?" The man's voice rumbled softly and threatened like distant thunder. "Yo' got to have yo' fling?"

Then the woman's voice, shrill but subdued: "I don' love you no mo', Frank."

"You got er nice home 'n nice lil' babies, 'n you goin' to leave 'em fo' a yaller man—is you?"

They were opposite us now, walking very slowly and occasionally lurching against each other.

"Yo' ain't goin' ter make trouble, Frank?"

"I ain't goin' ter give you up, Lily."

"You ain't? How you goin' ter fix fo' ter keep me?"

They came to a halt and faced each other, the woman defensive and defiant, the man somber, quiet, with a certain savage dignity and slowly smoldering like an inactive volcano. You couldn't see their features, only a white flashing of eyes and teeth in such light as there was.

"You's one er dese new women," said the man softly. "You's got ter be boss 'n have yo' own way."

He stood for some moments looking down into her face, appraising as it were her flightiness, and meditating justice. Then he struck her quietly, swiftly and hard, so that her half-open mouth closed with a sharp snap.

She was not senseless, but she made no effort to rise. He stood over her, smoldering. Then, his voice suddenly soft and tender, "I reckon I is got ter learn you," he said, and he picked her up in his arms and carried her from the roadside deep into the tangled growths of the vacant yard—deeper and deeper, until no sound at all came to us from them.

"That was Mrs. Fulton's laundress and her husband," said Hilda. "She's been trying to copy Mrs. Fulton; but he's settled that. He's a real man, and he'll keep his wife. Women like to be hit and trampled. It proves to them that they're worth while."

"That may be, Hilda. I don't know. I couldn't hit a woman. . . . You haven't told me that you're not going to tell what you saw."

"I don't know," she said; "he's suffered enough. It ought to end."

"But I thought you—didn't want to hurt me?"

"I don't. Still——"

"Still what?"

"Oh, favors aren't everything."

"What do you mean, Hilda!"

"Oh, I'm just a servant. I suppose I could be bought."

"I thought better of you."

"Not with money."

"Not with money? How then?"

She turned her face up to mine, then smiled and closed her eyes. "A kiss more or less," she said, "wouldn't matter much to you."

And I kissed her.

Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me until the silence between us grew oppressive. Then with a sudden, "Oh, what's the use!" turned and hurried off. But I caught up with her in two bounds.

"Don't go away like that."

"Oh," she cried, "I hoped you wouldn't. But you did. It's bad enough to love you, but to despise you too! Oh, don't worry. I won't tell. I've been bought, I've lived."

I remained for a long time, alone, under the cedar tree. I was horribly ashamed and troubled, not because I had kissed her, but because I had had the impulse to kiss her again, because I realized at last that it takes more than a romantic love affair to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Because for a moment I saw myself as Hilda saw me—because for a moment I was able to judge Lucy and me, as others would judge us.

I remained for a long time. The negro and his wife came quietly out of the bushes, her arm through his. She would not now run off with the yellow man. I watched them until the darkness swallowed them.

I leaned against the fragrant stem of the cedar, my hand across my eyes. And in that moment of self-reproach, dread and contempt of the future, I too wished the most worthy and sincere wish of my life.

I wished that I had never been born.



XXVI

For once, with complete fervor, I wished that I had never been born. And if I was to get back any glimmerings of self-respect, I must act like a man. Upon what grounds did I found the hope that Fulton would not soon find out about Lucy and me? Why, on the grounds of moral cowardice, of course. I dreaded to face any drastic, final issue. There was no other reason. Well, if I was to prove to myself that I was not a moral coward, Fulton must be told and the issue faced, and Fulton himself must be out-faced. It was not enough to love and be loved in secret. That way lies stealing and cheating. We must come into the open hand in hand, proclaim our love and demand our rights. If these were denied us—well, it would be too bad. But at least we would have come out from under the rose, and the consequences could be flung openly and courageously in the faces of those who denied us. And it would be fairer to Fulton to tell him. He was suffering torment. With a definite cause to face, it would be easier for him to regain his health and his sanity.

Strong in these resolutions, I felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But if you think that I went at once to Fulton and told him, you have greatly misapprehended the mental workings of a butterfly.

I went first to Lucy, and told her that I was going to tell. And from her, too, it was as if a weight had been lifted.

"We can't go on this way forever," I said; "we thought we could, but we know we can't. We love each other and we're human, and sooner or later—Oh, it's best to go to him now with a clean bill, and tell him that love is too strong for us all, and that he must come out on the side of love no matter how much it hurts him."

"When are you going to tell him?"

"No time like the present, Lucy."

And I drew a long breath, for in spite of the bold words, I felt panicky. I felt as if the doctors had just set the time for the operation, and that it was sooner than I expected.

"We ought to have told him long ago. Where is he?"

"In the garden."

"It's a hard thing to do. Give me a kiss."

A moment later I felt strong enough and noble enough to slay dragons. And I found Fulton sitting on a garden bench in a recess of clipped privet, Hurry on his lap.

"She isn't feeling very well, poor baby," he said; "it's the sudden heat. She couldn't eat any breakfast. Did you want to see me about something special?"

"Why, yes, I do. But you're busy with Hurry."

"We were just going in to lie down, weren't we?" he said to the child. "I won't be a minute."

He picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the house. A few moments later he returned, smiling, as if she had said something that had touched his humor.

"Let's sit on the bench," he said. "It's the one cool place in Aiken, this morning."

Mechanically I sat down beside him and accepted a cigarette from his case.

"I always dread the first hot spell for the babies," he said. "I'm glad we're going up early this year."

"You'll be in New York a while?"

"At the New Turner. And then Stamford. Poor Lucy dreads Stamford, but I've got to be near the works. What are you planning to do this summer?"

"It depends a great deal on you, John."

Now he turned to me with a very grave expression on his face. "On me?"

"I love Lucy, John, and she feels the same way about me."

His expression of courteous inquiring gravity did not change. "So that's what was at the bottom of everything. I told her she was seeing too much of you, but she wouldn't listen. Of course, my contention was just on general principles. I thought you were both to be trusted."

"We only found it out just before you went to Palm Beach."

"You ought to have seen it coming. A man of your experience and record isn't like a college freshman in such matters."

"If I had seen it coming, John, believe me I'd have run from it. But all at once it had come, and it's a question now, not of what might have been, but of Lucy's happiness."

"Yes," he said, "we mustn't think of ourselves now, or of the children. We must think of what is best for Lucy. And what is best for Lucy can't be thought out offhand. There's the complication of winding up here, moving, and so forth. What is your idea? Yours and Lucy's?"

"We hope and trust that you won't want to stand in our way."

"Divorce? Well, of course, it might come to that. It's not, however, an idea which I am prepared offhand to receive with enthusiasm. Any more than I propose to act upon the very first impulse which I had when you told me."

"What was that?"

"I thought how delicious it would be to get my automatic and fill you full of lead. But you and Lucy, I take it, have so far resisted your temptations, and I must battle with mine."

"I ought to have said that; our temptations have been resisted, John."

He shrugged that vital fact aside with, "Oh, I should have known if there had been anything to know."

"I needn't say, need I, that I feel like hell about your position, your end of it?"

"My position is not so bad as it was. I have something definite to face now. But much as I appreciate your impulsive good will, I don't think that your sympathy is a thing which I care to accept. Lucy, of course, feels that her fancy for you is a more imperative call than her duty to her children and me."

"You've been in love, John."

"I am in love. I think we had better not discuss our several powers of loving."

He rose from the bench and began to stroll up and down in front of it.

"I haven't," he said, "given this contingency any thought whatever. You and Lucy will have to possess your souls in patience for a time. It is all very sudden. But supposing for a moment that I should consent to a divorce. Are you able to support a wife?"

"I have no money of my own," I said, "but my father, as you know, has oceans of it, and gives me a very handsome income."

"And yet he might not care to support you above the ruins of a home. In that eventuality what could you do? Lucy is very extravagant."

"I could work my hands to the bone for her."

Fulton looked curiously at his own lean, nervous hands, smiled faintly, and said: "Yes, and then be chucked aside like a worn-out garment. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And now you'll be anxious to see Lucy, and report. Tell her that I swallowed the pill without making too much of a face. Tell her that I seemed inclined to be reasonable. Tell her also with my compliments that she must continue to exercise self-restraint and patience. Things are bad enough. If they were any worse I could not answer the consequences."

"All right, John. Thank you for taking it so calmly."

"Oh, I'm not calm inside. Don't worry about that."

I left him there—standing very straight in the garden path, his face the color of granite, and of the stillness.



XXVII

"What did he say?"

Her face was brilliant with excitement and anxiety. And I told her as well as I could.

"He was preternaturally calm and easy," I said; "I couldn't imagine a man being more well-bred about anything. But he won't say anything definite now. Of course, he ought to have time to think. We could have counted on that, if we'd thought. He will take plenty of time to make up his mind, and then he won't change it. But Lord, I'm glad he knows now; and from us."

There was a quiet knocking on the half-open door of the living-room.

"Come in. . . . Oh, John, you needn't have knocked."

He came in slowly and quietly, a gentle smile on his lips. The gray granite look had softened into his natural coloring.

"I must say you're a very handsome pair," he said. "Don't go just yet, Archie. If we three are to talk things over in the future, we had better have a little tentative practice. Are we three the only ones who know of this sensational development?"

"And Schuyler," I said.

"Is he for you or against you?"

"We thought we could be just great friends and see each other once in a while. He was for that. But, of course, that was only romantic nonsense."

"Yes, that was nonsense," said Fulton. "It would have made my position altogether too ridiculous. Did it occur to you to be great friends, and not see each other?"

"John," exclaimed Lucy, "you don't understand."

"I don't understand the importance which lovers attach to love? Well, perhaps not. Drunkards hate to cure themselves of drink; smokers of smoke; lovers of love. Yet all these appetites can be cured, often to the immense benefit of the sufferers and of everybody concerned. And so you thought you could lead two lives at once, Lucy?"

"I did think so."

"Gathering strength in romantic byways to see you through the prosy thoroughfares? It wouldn't have worked."

"We know that now."

"You couldn't have lied about every meeting with Archie—lied as to where you were going and where you had been. Truth comes natural to you, even if you seem to have fallen down on some of the other virtues."

I knew that he was laboring under a great strain. And yet for the life of me I could not read any symptoms of that laboring in his face or voice. His voice was easy, casual, and tinged with humor. It was almost as if he was relieved to find two such inconsequential persons as Lucy and myself at the bottom of his troubles. Now and then his left eyebrow arched high on his forehead, and there would be a sharp sudden glance in the corresponding eye.

"I wonder," he said, turning to me, "if people in your situation ever look at it from the critical outsider's point of view. Have you considered that a passion for something forbidden is not a natural, not a respectable passion? According to all moral and social laws Lucy is a forbidden object for your love and vice versa. People are not going to think well of you two."

"Oh, we know that," said Lucy, wearily.

"My dear Lucy, you mustn't show signs of distress so early in the game. What we are discussing, or trying to throw a little light on, is the subject which just now, by all accounts, should interest you more than anything else in the world. Furthermore, I really must insist on consideration for myself and the children."

"No amount of talk ever made me do right—or wrong," said Lucy; "I just do right or wrong, and of course you think this is wrong. So what's the use?"

"Think it wrong," exclaimed Fulton, "of course I do. Don't you?" His voice expressed almost horrified surprise. "Don't you think it wrong to fall out of love with your husband, into love with another man, and to take no more interest in your children than if they were a couple of wooden dolls made in Germany?"

"Caring enough makes everything right," she said, still wearily, as if the whole subject bored her.

"Caring enough!" exclaimed John. "Oh, caring enough makes everything right. But do you care enough—either of you? I may change my mind, but just now, as a man fighting for what little happiness there may be left for him in the world, this question of how much you care is the crux of the whole matter. If I thought that you cared enough I'd take my hat off to the exception which proves the rule that all illicit passions are wrong. If I thought that you cared enough I'd think that a great wonder had come to pass in the world, and I'd give you my blessing and tell you to go your ways."

Lucy rose and went appealingly to him. "John, dear," she said, "we do care enough."

He turned to me quickly.

"And you think that?"

"I care enough," I said, "so that nothing else matters—not even the hurt to you."

"Do you care so much that no argument will change you?"

I think Lucy and I must both have smiled at him.

"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 God," 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 amusement. 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 passing 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 embarrass 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 hell-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 embarrassing 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 ambassador. 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

Beyond saying that he thought for various reasons we should see less of each other, Fulton had made no effort to keep Lucy and me apart. If he had an adviser in this, that adviser was Schuyler. The idea, I suppose, was that Lucy, unopposed, would soon tire of the affair, as she had tired of others in her extreme youth, and return to her duty, if not to her affection. But we only loved each other the more. And the various exasperations of delay became hard to bear. Lucy, when what seemed to her a reasonable time had passed, and Fulton had not yet made up his mind about the divorce, was against delay. We had warned Fulton we had played the game, why should we lose time to do so? I had to argue with her against the next steamer for foreign parts, and to persuade her (half persuade her) that in the long run patience would serve us best. "Now," I said, "we don't feel that we need anyone but ourselves. But we both love people—our own kind of people. If John won't play fair (we called it that) our own kind of people will be on our side, no matter what we do. But we should have John's word for it that he is not going to play fair, before we take any drastic step."

The Fultons left Aiken, and after what seemed to me a decent delay of a few days, I followed them to New York. John seemed further than ever from coming to a decision, so Lucy thought. But she evinced a more patient spirit. For the young woman with credit and a fondness for clothes New York is a great solace, even if she is half broken-hearted.

"The contract with the Russian has gone through," she said; "John will make a lot of money. I tell him that it's horrid to get rich by making things that are used to kill people with, but he says there are too many people in the world, and that most of them would be the better for a little killing—so he's given me a fine credit, and I'm buying all the clothes I need."

"Lucy, I don't think you ought to spend his money—any more than you absolutely have to—considering."

"We spoke of that. He said I'd hurt him enough, and that while I was still ostensibly his wife, he wished me to have all that he could give me."

"While you are still ostensibly his wife? That sounds as if—Oh, as if he was going to step out, Lucy, doesn't it?"

"Sometimes he talks as if it was all arranged. He says, 'Next year, if you shouldn't happen to be with me, I'll do so and so,' and all that sort of talk. At other times he talks of building a big house down on Long Island—just the kind of house I've always wanted—just as if he was sure that I would still be living with him."

Well, one day Fulton came to my hotel and sent up his card. I went down to him as quickly as I could finish dressing. He said:

"Sorry to trouble you, but my time isn't quite my own. This seemed a golden opportunity. We've a lot to talk over. I've a taxi outside. Will you drive around a little?"

"Certainly, if you'll just wait while I telephone."

I called up Lucy.

"I can't meet you this morning, I am to have a talk with John. Somehow I feel sure that something is going to be decided." My heart was beating quick and fast. I was unaccountably excited. This excitement seemed to communicate itself to Lucy. She said as much.

"I'm terribly excited," she said, and her voice had a kind of wild, triumphant note in it. "You'll tell me everything the minute you can?"

"Of course. Good luck."

"Good luck."

We drove across Forty-third Street and up the crowded Avenue for several blocks without speaking. Then Fulton smiled a little and spoke in a level, easy voice.

"Perhaps," he said, "the water is not so cold as it looks. Shall we take the plunge?"

"By all means," I said. My heart was thumping nervously. I hoped he would not notice it.

"Lucy and I," he said, "as you know, were wonderfully happy for a good many years. Until last winter, I was never away from her over night. And then, only because of a financial crisis. I have never even looked at another woman with desire, or thought of one. Until last winter, Lucy was the same about other men. She was a wonderful little mother to her kids, and the most faithful, loving, valiant wife that ever belonged to a man full of cares and worries."