Chapter 12

"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."

"I know all this, John," I said; "I could wish that you had been unhappy together."

"I wish to make several things clear," he said. "According to all civil and moral law, I am an absolutely undivorceable man. There is only one ground for divorce in this state. To clear the decks for you and Lucy, I should have to smirch myself and take a black eye."

"But the people who count always understand these things."

"In order to secure my own unhappiness, to make it everlasting, I should have to perjure myself. I know that it is the custom of the country for married gentlemen who are no longer loved to perjure themselves. But it seems to me a custom that would bear mending. However, it is not yet a question of that."

"Still undecided?"

"No. My mind is made up. I am prepared to step down and take my black eye on certain conditions."

I bowed my head.

"Lucy," he said, "doesn't love the children as much as I do. She has allowed herself to forget how dear they are to her, so it would have to be understood among us three that I should retain the children. You see, I've got to keep something of what belongs to me--to keep me going. Lucy will agree to this, because just now all she wants is new clothes and you. There is another point upon which I feel that I must be satisfied."

"What is that?"

"How long is your young people's infatuation for each other going to last? If it is to be brief and evanescent, it would be absurd for me to take a black eye. But if it is to be stable and enduring, I should be ashamed to stand in the way of it. Knowing something of Lucy's history, how long do you think her fancy for you will last?"

"These things are on the lap of the gods."

"Well, then, yours for her? Now, I know that my love for her, which has been tried by fire and ice and time, will last until I die, or lose my reason. With me it is not a question of _thinking_, but of _knowing_. How long do you _know_ that your love for her will last?"

"That is an impossible question to answer. I think it will always last."

"Thought won't do, Archie, on this all-important phase of the situation, we must have the light of definite knowledge. Now, as a man who has had many love affairs, some innocent and some not, you should have a good working knowledge of your endurance in such matters. If you were cast away on a desert island with a very pretty woman, you to whom women have always been necessary, you from whose hand there has always been some woman or other ready to eat, how long would your love for Lucy last?"

I was amazed momentarily by his question, but it was not one which I could answer.

"A week?" He rather shot this at me, and for a moment there was a satiric gleam in his eye.

I nodded.

"You _know_ that it would last a week?"

I began to feel a little angry, and I said, quite sharply: "I _know_ it."

"A month?"

"Yes, a month."

Both our voices had risen. His became easy and level once more.

"A year, Archie?"

"How can I know that, John?" I tried to meet his quick change of manner. "I _think_ so. I'm very sure of it."

"But you don't know?"

"I can't _know_."

"And if the very pretty woman on the island came to you in the night and said she had seen hob-goblin eyes in the dark, and was afraid--how long, though you still love her, would you be faithful to Lucy? A man like you, in good health, with an incompletely developed moral sense?"

"We are getting nowhere," I said, determined to keep my temper.

"We are getting to this," said he, "that if a year from today, you and Lucy still love each other, and have been faithful to each other, and still want each other--you shall have each other."

"A year?" I think he smiled at the surprise and disappointment in my voice.

"During which year," he said, "you will not meet each other except by accident, and you will not correspond."

I said nothing, but he read my thoughts.

"It isn't fair to you and Lucy? At least it is fair to me. Nobody has thought about me. I have had to think for myself, and for the children. Admit this--if your love stands a year's test you will stand a far greater chance of happiness than if you ran away together now, unblessed by the man you had wronged, and unclergied. Admit this, too--that if your love doesn't stand the test, then my life has been ruined for as futile, puerile, misbegotten a passion as ever reared its head under an honest man's roof. Admit it! Admit it."

"I'm not sure that I admit any such thing."

"Then, my dear fellow," he said, "your mental and moral capacity are on precisely the same plane. . . . I'm sure you don't want to injure Lucy. Give her this chance to straighten out and get untangled. If there is any truth in your love for her you will see that this way is best for her."

"I am thinking of her happiness."

"_Are_ you?"

"She's been very patient, John. I can't tell you how patient."

"For God's sake don't try to tell me. Haven't I had enough to bear?"

"I think Lucy won't be willing to wait a year."

"She must be made willing. You must help. A year soon passes--soon passes. If things then are as they are now, then I shall believe that your love for each other is strong and fine, and I shall renounce my claim with a good grace--a good grace."

"If we can't wait a year, John!"

"You mean if you won't? In that case I shall not feel that Lucy is entitled to a divorce, or either of you to any money at my hands. Among the people who are necessary to you and Lucy, a wronged and upright husband has great power. If you are such children, such fools, as not to be willing to stand a test of your love, you will have to be punished. It would mean that your passion has nothing to do with what is understood by love. You would merely be pointed at and passed up as a rather well-known young couple with adulterous proclivities."

There was a long, charged silence.

"The law and the prophets are all on your side, John, but----"

"You'll not answer now, please. You'll think it over. And don't forget all the pleasant things that you can do in a year. There's that hunting trip in Somaliland you used to talk about so much--there's London and Paris--wonderful places for a man who's trying to cure himself of an unlawful love."

"Trying to _cure_ himself?"

"Of course. Jesting aside, don't you think that what you and Lucy want to do to Jock and Hurry and me is _wrong_? Of course you do. You're not a devil. If, by uttering the wish, you could bring it about that you had never loved Lucy, that she had never fallen out of love with me and loved you over the heads of her children, that all might be as it was when you first began to come to our house, wouldn't you utter that wish? Of course you would."

He was smiling at me now, very gently and cunningly, and there was, at the same time, in his eyes an awful pathos.

"Why, yes," I said, "I suppose so."

"Just bear out what I've always maintained," said he; "I've always maintained that you were a good fellow--at heart."

"Am I to see Lucy again--before the year begins?"

"Is it very necessary?"

"I suppose not. But----"

"Well, I imagine Lucy will insist on seeing you. It will be a pity, but after all she's only a little child in some ways. It's all going to be very hard for you both, at first," he said gently. "So you shall see each other again--if she says so."

Suddenly he reached out his hand, and I took it.

"Oh," he said, "I needed your help."

XXX

It seemed to me, at the time, that I had showed myself very weak in the conference in the taxi-cab. It seemed to me that my acquiescence in Fulton's proposals reflected on the strength of my love for Lucy. Perhaps it did. But in the clearer light of today it seems to me that to his questions I made the only answers possible; and that only a demented person could have found serious flaws in the logic of his position.

When we had parted, I walked for a long time in the most crowded streets, trying to reconcile myself to the long separation from Lucy, and to the weakness which I thought I had betrayed in agreeing to it.

Could I endure that separation? The world would be empty with no Lucy to go to, no Lucy even to hear from. I loved her too much to part with all but the thought of her. It did not seem possible that the mere passage of time could dull the edge of my passion. Yet cold memory blinked at this very possibility.

I had parted from other women, thinking that thoughts of them must fill the rest of my life to the exclusion of everything else; only to find that after a little lapse of time their images faded, and even the memory of what they had been to me had no power to think.