Chapter 13

So might it be with Lucy. "You know it _might_," said cold memory. "Don't be a fool--you think it _won't_, but you know it might."

"But," I argued, "this is different. No other woman ever loved me as she does. I may be a fool, but her eyes have spoken, and I know the truth when I hear it."

"She _does_ love you," said my other self, which I have called cold memory, "and she did love him, and before his time, others, if only briefly. Without the sight of you to feed on, her love will starve and die. It is almost always so."

"Almost."

"There are exceptions. Is it likely, considering your records, that you and she will be an exception? It is not likely."

It wasn't. John Fulton was probably right. He believed that time would cure us, and almost the whole of human experience agreed with him.

And wouldn't it be better if we were cured? Far better. I had to admit that. We ought, indeed, to hope that we should be cured; to help with all our strength in the effecting of that cure. And conversely, Lucy ought to try to return to her affection for John and to her duty.

Suddenly I felt cold and shivery as before undergoing an operation.

Poor little Lucy! Even now she must be listening to John's ultimatum, as I had listened, but with this difference; she could not see the justice and the logic of his position. She would only see that she was being cruelly hurt, and thwarted, and disappointed; that she was being curbed and punished by forces too strong for her to cope with. And I pictured her, all reserve gone at last, a tortured child--just sobbing. It seemed to me that I must go to her or die. And indeed I went a little way toward their hotel. Then I thought, perhaps her sobs would move him to a change of heart. Perhaps he will weaken, and let her go. Upon the strength of this thought I returned to my own hotel, rearing a blissful edifice of immediate happiness.

I sat in the lobby in a position of reading, a newspaper before my face; but I did not read. I was listening for the boy who would page me to the telephone. Many names were called in the lobby, but it was two o'clock before I started at the sound of my own.

Fulton was at the other end of the telephone, not Lucy. He sounded very much upset and depressed: "Lucy would like to see you right away, if you can come round."

"Of course."

We said no more.

Her face was white and tear-stained. I had no sooner closed the door of their sitting-room behind me, than she flung herself upon my breast and burst into a storm of sobs. After a long time words began to mingle with the sobs.

"It will kill me. Why does he want me to die? . . . I've only got you. . . . I want to belong to you--to you."

I talked and I talked, and I soothed and I soothed, but she was sick with grief and pain and a kind of insane resentment, as if she had gone through a major operation without an anesthetic. It would have been horrible to see anybody suffer so. And she was the woman I loved! The strain was so great upon me that at last my powers of resistance snapped. I flung honor to the winds, and became strong with resolution. And now my words seemed to pierce her consciousness and to calm her.

"It's all right, Lucy." I had to speak loudly at first, as if she was deaf. "You shan't suffer like this. I tell you you shan't--not if I am damned to hell."

I knew now that she was listening, the sobs became muffled and less frequent. "It's you and me against the world now," I said. "There'll be no more flimflamming. I promised John to wait a year. That doesn't matter. A promise made at your expense won't hold. . . . When is your husband coming back?"

". . . hour," was all the answer I got. . . .

"Then there's not much time left. Try to pull yourself together. We've got to make all our plans right now, and there's not much time."

"You will take me away?"

"Of course. Now listen. There's no sense in putting your husband on his guard. Let him think that we are both agreed to the year's probation. I'll look up things and engage passage. I'll do that this afternoon. Tonight I'll go to Hot Springs to see my father and get money. My own balance is very low, unfortunately. Day after tomorrow I'll be in town again. Now, how are we going to communicate?"

I can't say that she was calm now, but she no longer sobbed, and her mind was in working order again.

"By telephone," she said. "Every morning when I know John's plans for the day I'll let you know, and so you'll know when to call me up."

Already the anticipations of our great adventure were bringing back the color to her cheeks and the sparkle to her eyes. I smiled at her. "Don't be too cheerful," I said; "we might get ourselves suspected."

"Couldn't we just tell John that we had decided to go--and go?"

"Better not."

"I hate to deceive and play act and be underhanded."

"So do I--but--Lucy, darling, you're going to trust me in more important things than this. I _think_ my way is best. We don't want any more agonies and recriminations and scenes. _Do_ we?"

I took her in my arms and whispered, "It's only a few days now, but I don't see how I can wait. I don't see how."

And she burrowed with her face between my cheek and shoulder, and whispered back, "And I don't see how I can wait."

There was a little space of very tense silence, during which my eyes roved to the little silver traveling-clock on the mantel, and then I said in a voice that shook:

"I'd better get out before he comes back."

XXXI

My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me. As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise the wind.

"I need a lot of money," I said; "sooner or later you'll know why. So I may as well tell you."

My father's fine weather-beaten face of a country squire expressed an interest at once frankly affectionate and tinged with a kind of detached cynicism.

"I am going to run off with Lucy Fulton," I said.

"I supposed that was it," said my father, without evincing the least surprise.

"You _did_?"

"Oh, we old fellows put an ear to the ground now and then," he explained; "and sometimes sleep with one eye open. Punch's advice to the young couple about to marry was 'Don't.' My advice to you and Lucy is double don't. Why not give yourselves a year to think it all over, as John Fulton so sanely and generously suggests?"

Astonishment at my father's superhuman knowledge of events must have showed in my face. Still smiling with frank affection, he said, "John put me in touch with the whole situation before he left Aiken. The year of probation was my suggestion to him."

"But Lucy and I can't agree."

"Then you can't. Do you sail, fly, entrain, or row--and when?"

"We sail, father, next Wednesday."

"A week from today. I am profoundly sorry. It's very rough on Fulton, just when he has closed with this Russian contract and is by way of getting rich."

"It's our _one_ chance for happiness, father."

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "And I think it is your one sure road to misery."

"But you'll see me through?"

"Come to me a year from today. Tell me that during that time you have neither seen Lucy nor communicated with her, but that you still love each other--_then_ I'll see you _through_."

"My dear father, it's so much better for you to put up the money than for me to borrow it from one of my friends."

"Only because the friend would expect you to pay him back. How would you live when his money was gone--keep on borrowing?"

"Why, father, you're acting like a parent in an old-fashioned novel. Are you threatening to cut me off?"

"My son," said he, "a man who had done well, and who deserved well of the world came to me and showed me his heart--a heart tormented beyond endurance with unreturned love, with jealousy, and with despair. He threw himself upon my mercy. And I said that I would help him, with whatever power of help I have at command. I don't love that man, my son. I love you. But I am on his side. All my fighting blood is aroused when I learn that still another American husband has been wronged by his wife, and by an idle flirting bachelor. God keep me firm in what must seem to you like cruelty in one to whom you have always turned with the utmost frankness and loyalty in your emergencies. And from whom until this moment you have always received help."

I was appalled and thunderstruck. After a while I said, "Father, she sobbed so that I thought she would break a blood vessel. I couldn't stand it. I had to say I would take her away. If I don't, I think she will die or kill herself."

My father drew himself up very straight, and looked very handsome and stern, for a moment. Then his frame relaxed and his eyes twinkled, and he said, "Die? Kill herself? My grandmother!"

"Oh, father," I cried, "don't! Don't! She is all the world to me. You talk as if----"

"I talk as if she was an excellent example of the modern American wife in what the papers call 'society.' And that is precisely what she is. You know that as well as I do. Just because you love her is no reason for pretending that she's a saint and a martyr and the victim of a grand historical passion. She _is_ lovely to look at. She _is_ charming to be with. But that doesn't prevent her from being a bad little egg."

"Father," I said, as gently as I could, "I love her with all my heart. Why, she's like a little child, and she's being so hurt. You've never refused me anything. Help me to make her happy."

"When she has gotten over her fancy for you, when Fulton has plenty of money for her to spend, she will be as happy as she deserves to be--until she makes herself miserable again by indulging in some affair similar to this. Now, my dear boy, go back to her, tell her that you haven't enough money to elope on and no way of getting it. Tell her also that if at the end of a year's probation you and she still want each other, nobody will oppose you, and that you, on the day of your marriage to her, will be made a rich man in your own right."

"Father, I _want_ her so."

"And I _want_ champagne so," said my father. "And the accursed doctor has forbidden it. Do I torture myself? Not at all. I turn for solace to an excellent bottle of Scotch whiskey. And this has at least the effect of making me want the champagne less. Don't get confused between psychology and physiology. If I were in your boots I'd slip over to Paris--and drink Scotch whiskey."

So I went back to New York, and, as soon as possible, I talked to Lucy over the telephone, and told her about the interview with my father.

"But," I finished, "we'll do whatever you say. We can't very well land in Europe without any money; but I've still got most of the passage money; and if you say so, we can stay right in this country and live on that for a few weeks, while I try to get a job. I could borrow some money, but it would have to be paid back. Oh, Lucy, this is such a humiliating confession to make, but what _can_ I do?"

"Everybody is against us," she said, "everything--I don't suppose there's any use struggling."

She sounded cold and tired.

"I suppose," she went on slowly, "we'll have to wait, the way John says. Shall we?"

"You say it, Lucy. Don't make me say it."

"So we'll wait," she said; "not see each other, and not communicate. I don't see how I can stand it, but I suppose I can. . . . A whole year--a whole year!"

"At the end of it, my darling, all that there is in the world for me, nobody will stand in our way; there'll be plenty of money and a long life before us."

"Listen . . . all the long time will you take care of yourself?"

"Yes, Lucy."

"And not notice any other ladies?" . . .

"Lucy . . . let's take a chance on what I have got."

A long silence. Then: "Oh, no. I suppose John's right. Everybody's right. . . . But"--there was a valiant ring in her voice, "we'll show 'em they were wrong and cruel. Won't we?"

"Yes, Lucy."

"Good-by, then, and God bless and keep you."

"It's only for a year, Lucy."

I heard a short, dry sob. It was mine.

XXXII

I don't know how I got through the next ten days. After three of them had passed I began to fear a mental breakdown, because my mind kept working all by itself, without orders. If I wanted to think forward, to the end of the probationary year, I couldn't. Always I kept thinking I ought to have done, or said, so and so. I ought to have been firmer. I was always reviving that drive in the taxicab with Fulton, or that last interview with my father. If my love was strong and fine I ought never to have knuckled under. They had had too easy a time with me. I had played into their hands, and they had treated me like a child. From pure humiliation I could not sleep at night.

And what was Lucy doing? How was she bearing it? What sort of life was she leading, the poor, abused child? The world seemed to have all joined against me in a conspiracy of silence. Nobody mentioned Lucy in my hearing. Although the same city held us, until they moved to Stamford, I had no accidental glimpse of her. Our last talk had not been in the least satisfactory. It seemed to me that I must see her once more to preach courage and hope. During those first ten nights I hardly slept at all. Sometimes I would picture out Lucy's whole course of life during the next few months. And I imagined that, grown at last utterly indifferent through suffering, she might drift back into her former relations with Fulton, if only because he loved her so much, and no one can keep on saying no forever. Such imaginings had sometimes the vividness of scenes actually witnessed and threw me into tortures of jealousy.

Not until a short period of the tenth day was Lucy ever actually out of my mind. I had been sitting in a chair staring at a newspaper, all my nerves tense and hungry, when suddenly they seemed to have relaxed and to have been fed. The skin of my face no longer seemed tightly stretched. I felt as if I had waked from a refreshing sleep; but this was not the case. I had simply, without deliberation, forgotten Lucy for half an hour, and been making agreeable personal plans for the year of probation.

"Good Lord," I thought; "has living without her, already begun to be easier?"

It had. I began to take pleasure in seeing my friends; to look forward to the Newport season, to the international tennis, to the golf championship at Ekwanok, to the thousand and one things that make for the happiness of a butterfly's summer.

After a month of Newport, days passed with only hurried thoughts of Lucy. Chance mention of her name gave me no uneasiness; they affected my heart, like sudden trumpets, but I knew that my face had become an inscrutable mask, and that my voice was in perfect control. Those who had thought that there was something between us began to think differently.

And then, after days of suspense, surmise, and real consternation, the legs of civilization seemed to have been knocked from under it, and the greatest nations of Europe flew at each other.

Now indeed there seemed an easy way to the year's end. The Germans rolled through Belgium and into France, outraging humanity. It looked as if they would roll right into Paris, and sow salt where the world's first city had stood.

I rushed up to Bar Harbor to tell my parents that I was going to France to enlist in the foreign legion. Oh, how swiftly the time would fly, I thought. That I might get crippled or killed never occurred to me. I thought only that having failed at everything else, I must obviously be possessed of military genius. I pictured myself climbing the bloody ladder of promotion to high command and winning the gratitude of that country which next to my own I love the most.

My mother, to whom I first broached the news, did not cry or make a fuss. But I saw that I had distressed her terribly.

"It isn't our war," she said; "and what use will one more enlisted man be to _them_? And besides, my dear, _only_ sons are always the first ones to get hurt; only sons and men whose families are dependent upon them. But . . ." and here she gave me a wonderful look . . . "I think I know why you want to go. And that makes me very proud."

"I think you _do_ know, Mumsey," I said. "It's because we'd rather get hurt trying to do something worth while, than go on the way we've always gone on, amounting to nothing, and disappointing everybody."

Then she got me in her arms, and cried over me a little.

My father, as usual, took my decision with the most good-natured indifference.

"Fine experience," he said, "for any man that's free to go. Makes me wish I were younger and without obligations. Still I can enjoy the music at the swimming-pool with a free conscience; because I'm sending over all the money I can spare. . . . How did you reach the conclusion that you could go?"

"_Could_ go?"

"Yes. Of course you've no complication in your life that should keep you from going. Well, I'm glad of that."

"It seems to me that if anyone is free to go, I am."

He smiled upon me, somewhat too playfully for my comfort, and shook his head slowly. "So Fulton and I were right about the year's probation. I'm delighted. How soon did you and Lucy find out that absence _doesn't_ make the heart grow fonder?"

"Oh," I said, "it isn't _that_. What has that to do with it? There's a year to be got over, and fighting's the most agreeable and the quickest way I can think of just now."

My father looked disappointed.

"I hoped you had got over caring. And--you haven't?"

For a few moments I met his eyes. But only for a few moments. He didn't laugh. "I'm glad," he said simply.

I tried to explain exactly how I felt.

"Of course not seeing her or hearing from her--why--you see--but when I do see her it will all come right back. I _know_ that."

He smiled a little grimly. "Normally," he said, "there are years of pleasant living before you. But not if you get yourself killed--not if you lose an arm or a leg, or come back with half your face shot off, and your one remaining ear stone deaf from cannon fire. But anyway I'm glad the Fulton business is over. Your love has cooled and, even if Lucy's hasn't--there could never be anything between you now?"

He was speaking sarcastically. He went on in the same vein: "The year over--even if you found that Lucy was still wrapped up in you, that her happiness depended on you, you would not, of course, feel that you were under any obligation to _pretend_ that you still cared for her and to do a gentleman's best to make her happy."

"I get your point, father," I said; "and of course if she still cares, I must try to make good. Of course I must."

"Suppose," he said, no longer sarcastically, but very earnestly, "suppose the year is up. Suppose Lucy still cares, and as a reward for her faithfulness and her patience there is nothing but your grave 'somewhere in France'? This is why I asked you if you _could_ go."

"I'll look like a fool," I said. "I've told several people that I was surely going."

"That's too bad," he said; "but you'll have to stand it. You have a good reputation for physical pluck, though, and nobody will say anything very nasty. And as for us," his voice rang a little, "who are on the inside, we know that it is braver of you to stay than to go."

"Anyway," I said, "if she--if Lucy--doesn't care any more--why I can go then."

"You can go _then_. But it seems to me that a man of education is wasted in a trench. That, however, is a matter of taste."

XXXIII

It was not until the early winter that I saw Lucy. It was by accident. I sat just behind her at a musical comedy. She was with her husband. They looked very prosperous. They seemed to be comradely enough. Mostly I saw only the back of her head; once, her full profile; and then at last she turned half around in her seat, and saw me. I don't know what I did. I think I smiled, half rose to my feet, and lifted my hand as if to take off a hat--which of course I didn't have on. She nodded, and smiled brightly; but her eyes had that expression of praying that I have so often mentioned.

It was long since I had thought of her for more than a few minutes at a time. But now my heart began to beat furiously and all my sleeping love for her waked in my heart.

And now she was telling her husband _who_ was sitting just behind them.

I went out after the act, intending to stay out. But Fulton followed so quickly that he caught me just as I was leaving the theater. "Hello, Archie," he said.

"Hello, John. How are you all?"

"Pretty well," he said; "and you?"

"Pretty well. Cartridges still looking up?"

"Yes. We're doubling the capacity of the plant for the second time since the war started. Have a drink?"

We walked to the nearest saloon. "We heard that you were going to enlist."

"I did think of it, and then I got cold feet."

"Like hell you did!"

"Well, reasons against it were found for me. Reasons which I ought to have thought of for myself. Here's how."

"Santé!" said John. A moment later, "Going to Aiken?" he asked.

"Why, it depends."

There was an awkward silence.

"Lucy is very anxious," he then said, "to open our house again this winter."

"As a matter of fact," said I glibly, "I've more than half decided on Palm Beach."

A bell rang shrilly.

"Time to go back," he said.

"One moment, John. I'm not going back--of course. How is Lucy?"

"Oh, pretty well," he said stiffly; "I think she'll come through all right. Had a tough time for a while."

Upon that he hurried off to rejoin her, and I turned my face once more to the bar, and gave an order. I felt as if I had been through a terrible ordeal. I was all in.

From now on I heard more often of the Fultons, for they were leading a conspicuously gay life. Somebody had loaned them a house for six weeks, and by all accounts Lucy was making money fly.

I saw her in the distance three times. Twice to bow and exchange smiles. The other time she didn't see me. Seeing her meant two or three days of torture; then her image and desirability would begin to fade once more. But at least no other woman interested me in the least.

Presently they went to Aiken. A few days later I entrained for Palm Beach; but found that I could not stand the place or the pace for long periods of time, and fell into the habit of commuting with New York. It was the war, I think, which made me so restless. It seemed to me that the night had not been well slept, nor the most promising day well begun until I had read the headlines in the papers. My hot wish to fight as a soldier had cooled. More and more I wanted to be of service, but in some way which seemed to me more imaginative and intelligent. But I could not hit on the way. I must go to Paris, I thought, then surely the inspiration of helpfulness would come. But I could not very well go to Paris until the year of probation was up. If Lucy still cared--well, it would be easy enough for me to care. I knew now that her physical presence was sufficient to make me care--at any given moment. "Oh," I thought, "I can't lose. Either I'll go to Paris and be useful, or I'll begin a new life with the girl I love who loves me."