Chapter 8

"And I'll stay and help Lucy unpack," I said. "Lord, people, I'm glad you're not going!"

The moment we were alone Lucy said: "You did it."

"Did what?"

"Don't beat about the bush! Don't pretend that you are not a blessed angel in disguise!"

Her face was very grave and lovely.

"It's the kindest, tactfulest thing that anybody ever did."

"I couldn't bear the thought of your going back to the city when it's such fun here."

"What can I say or do to thank you?"

"Nothing, Lucy. Yes, you can. You can ride with me this afternoon."

She looked a little troubled. "Last night, after you had gone," she said, "John said, 'Aren't you seeing a good deal of Archie Mannering?'"

For a moment I felt distinctly chilled and uncomfortable. Then I said: "Oh, dear! Now Brutus himself is beginning to worry about us. How silly!"

"How silly!" echoed Lucy, and we stood staring at each other rather vapidly, finding nothing to say.

After a while I asked if John had said any more on the subject. "Did he embroider the theme at all?" I asked.

Lucy took a photograph out of the trunk tray and began to unwrap it. "Yes," she said. "He did. He even held forth. He said that when a woman no longer cared for her husband, it was dangerous for her to see much of another man. He realized, he said, that ours was an exceptional case, but that soon people would guess about _him_ and me, and that then they'd begin to talk about _you_ and me. And he hates anything conspicuous, and so forth, and so forth."

"What did you say?"

She smiled up at me, but not very joyously. "I said, 'I'm not going to be rude to one of the best friends I've got, just for fun. If you forbid me to see him, why I suppose I'll obey you, but I'd have to explain to him, wouldn't I? I'd have to say, "John considers our friendship dangerous, so we're not to see each other any more!"' And of course he said that that was out of the question, and I agreed with him."

"Still you've said it."

And we smiled at each other.

"He didn't give me a good character," said Lucy dolefully. "He said I never think of yesterday or tomorrow, but only of the moment. He said I neglect the children, and Oh, I'd like to end it all! It's an impossible situation. I'd give my life gladly to feel about him the way I used to, but I can't--I can't ever."

She looked very tragic.

"Oh," she went on vehemently, "it's terrible. I'm all cold and dumb. Every power of affection that I had has gone out like a candle. I _do_ neglect the children! It's because I can't look them in the face. I've failed him, and I've failed them, and I ought to tie a stone round my neck and jump into the nearest millpond."

"It's a good three miles to the nearest millpond," I said. "And there isn't a stone in this part of South Carolina. You are all up in the air now, because the situation you are in is so new to you. But you'll get used to it."

"If I don't go mad first."

"Why, Lucy?"

"You don't understand," she cried. "You have never had loving arms to go to when you were in trouble. I've had them and I've lost them. I mean I've lost the power to go to them and find comfort."

A picture of her running to my arms for comfort flashed through my mind, and troubled me to the marrow. And I had from that moment the definite wish to take her in my arms. And in that same moment I realized that those who thought we were too much together were not such meddling fools as I had thought them.

"Lucy," I said, and I hardly recognized my own voice. "Whatever happens, you've a friend who will never fail you."

"I know that," she said, and she held out her two hands, and I took them in mine.

"If you sent for me to the ends of the earth, I would come."

"I know that."

"There is nothing you could ask of me that I wouldn't give."

"I know that."

And that afternoon we rode together in the woods.

XVIII

A man must have descended to the very deepest levels of depression before he loses his power to laugh, or to be cheered by an unexpected bettering of his financial position. John Fulton was in a bad way, but certain things still struck him as funny, and the money which he had been enabled to borrow from the bank had eased his mind. Still, so Lucy told me, he could not sleep at night, and it must have been obvious to the most casual observer that he was a sick man. He had a drawn and hungry look. Jock and Hurry could by no means satisfy his appetite for affection. Indeed, I think the sight and touch and the sounds of them at play were no great comfort to him at this time. He must have felt in their presence something of that anguish of pity which a man feels for children who have lost their mother.

He had hoped at first that Lucy's failure of affection was but a temporary aberration. But at last he must have come to despair of any change in her feelings for him, at least under existing conditions. Indeed their relations were going from bad to worse. A man loved and beloved falls into habits of passion for which there is no cure but death or old age. Yet a man would readily believe that separation might affect him like an opiate, and it must have been in this belief that Fulton determined to accompany Harry Colemain on a trip to Palm Beach. To me he vouchsafed the explanation that he was not well and that he couldn't sleep, and that when he wasn't well, and that when he couldn't sleep, his one thought and desire was to get to salt water. "It always cures me," he said, just as if he had often been sick before. From Lucy I had the truth of the matter.

"He thinks," she said, "that if he goes away and stays away for a long time that perhaps I will miss him enough to want him back, and on the old footing. He isn't even going to write to me. It's going to be exactly as if he didn't exist."

"Do you think it wise for him to go, Lucy?"

"Perhaps it will do him good. It won't change me. I know that. If only he'd change. Haven't I done him enough harm to make him hate me? Archie, I'm so sorry for him that I wish I was dead. And yet I want to live. I'm too young to die. I want to live, and be happy--happy the way I used to be happy."

"And you can't with John?"

She shook her head quietly. "It's the most wonderful thing to be in love!" she said. "I wonder what I did to have that wonderful thing? I wonder what I've done to deserve to lose it? And even if--even if it happened again it could never be the same. There can be only one first time--even if you've got a silly memory that doesn't remember very well. And you make ties and habits and all these have to be thrown overboard when the second time happens, and there's scandal, and cold shoulders, and--what do you think I _ought_ to do? If I can't give him what he's paying for oughtn't I to cut loose on my own, to support myself, and not be a burden to him and a ubiquitous reminder that we've failed to make a go of living together? What _ought_ I to do?"

It had become very hard for me to tell her what I thought she ought to do. Ever since that moment when I had first known that I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her, I had begun to have doubts of my own honesty. And now she had put that honesty to a definite test, and I was determined that it should come through the ordeal alive.

"Must I really tell you what I think you ought to do?"

"Yes."

"Some of the things I think you ought to do, are things that I know you don't want to do--things that you think perhaps you _can't_ do. Women often say _can't_ when they mean _won't_, don't they?"

"Maybe."

"I'm afraid you aren't going to like what I'm going to say, nor me for saying it."

"Try me," she said, and she gave me a look of great trust and understanding.

"I'm going to tell you what I think you ought to do, Lucy, and what I think you ought to have done."

Any teacher whose scholars looked at him with the trustfulness and expectation with which Lucy now looked at me, must be inspired, I think, to the very top notch of his sense of honor and duty. I am sure at least that I laid the law down of what I thought she should do, and should have done with complete honesty and without regard to consequences. If I got nothing better for my pains than dislike, at least I could criticize her conduct and character without being biased by my growing affection for her.

"In the first place," I said, "when you found out that you no longer loved your husband, you made your first mistake. By your own admission he had given you everything in the way of devotion and faithfulness that a man can give a woman. When you found that you no longer loved him, you shouldn't have told him. He ought never to have known. You should have summoned all your fortitude and delicacy to deceive him into thinking that you had not changed toward him, and never would."

"I _couldn't_!" exclaimed Lucy.

"You wouldn't," I said.

"It wouldn't have been honest."

"Perhaps not. But it would have been noble."

Lucy naturally enough preferred praise to blame, and this showed in her face and in her voice. I felt infinitely removed from our previous terms of intimate confidence, when she said: "Couldn't or wouldn't, it's history that I didn't."

"That being so," I said, "I think you should go now to your husband and tell him that love or no love you propose to be his faithful wife till death part you; to put him first in your head, if not in your heart. It may be that through a long course of simulation you will come once more to care for him. Self-sacrifice is a noble weapon. I think, Lucy, that you would be very wise if you told him that two is not a lucky number."

"I don't understand."

"Jock and Hurry," I said, "are two."

She changed color to the roots of her hair. "Oh," she cried, "you don't understand how a woman feels about that! I'd rather die. I--I _couldn't_!"

"You _won't_."

"I thought _you_ understood me better. I thought _you_ wanted me to be happy!"

"Upon my soul, Lucy, I think that you might find happiness that way."

She shrugged her shoulders and her face looked hard as marble. "And that's your advice!" she said. And then with a sudden change of expression, "It's what you think I _ought_ to do. Would it please you if I took your advice? Is it what you _want_ me to do?"

I had spoken as I thought duty commanded. It hadn't been easy. With each word I felt that I had lost ground in her estimation. She asked that last question with the expression of a weary woebegone child, and I answered it without thought, and upon the urge of a wrong impulse.

"No--no," I cried. "It's not what I want you to do. I had almost rather see you dead."

There was a long silence.

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes, Lucy. Yes."

"Then you _do_ care. Oh, thank God!"

I don't know how she got there. It was as if I had waked up and found her in my arms.

Kissed and kissing, we heard the opening of the distant front door. And Oh, how I wish I had found the courage when Fulton came into the livingroom, to tell him that I loved his wife, and that she loved me, and what was he going to do about it! I did have the impulse, but not the courage. When Fulton came in Lucy was knitting at an interminable green necktie, and I was talking to her from a far chair across an open number of the illustrated _London News_. We looked, I believe, as casual and innocent as cherubim, but my conscience was very guilty, and it seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, that for the first time Fulton showed me a certain curtness of manner, as if he was not pleased at finding me so often in his house.

XIX

With the knowledge that I loved Lucy and that she loved me, came also the knowledge that for a long time the situation had been inevitable--inevitable if we kept on being so much in each other's company. Passages between us of words and looks now recurred to my memory filled with portentous meaning. Oh, I thought, how could I have been so blind! A fool must have seen it coming. I ought to have seen it coming. I ought to have run from it as a man runs from a conflagration. When Lucy told me that she no longer loved her husband I ought to have known that the fault was mine, and I ought to have gone to a far place, and left that little family to rehabilitate itself in peace. Surely after a "blank" spell Lucy would have loved her husband again.

But all the thoughts that I carried to bed with me that night were not dark with remorse. It was possible for whole minutes of time, especially between sleeping and waking, to forget the complications of the situation and to bask in the blissful warmth of its serenities. The laughter, the prayers, the adoration of Lucy's lovely eyes were mine now. She loved me better than her children, better than life itself. She had not said these things to me, she had looked them to me. It was wonderful to feel that I had been trusted with so much that was beautiful and precious.

Once a spoiled child, always a spoiled child. In the scheme of things I _would_ not at first give their proper place to those awful barriers which society has set up between a man and another man's wife. We loved each other with might and main, and our only happiness could be in passing over those barriers and belonging to each other. John Fulton and his children were but vague pale shadows across the sunshine.

The sleep that I got that night, short though it was, was infinitely refreshing. I waked with the feeling that happiness had at last come into my life, and that I was not thirty-five years old, but twenty years young.

I walked in my mother's garden waiting for servants to come downstairs and make coffee for me and poach eggs. It was going to be a lovely day. Already the sun had coaxed the tea-olives to give out their odor of ripe peaches. "How she loves them," I thought. "If only she were with me now."

The garden seemed very beautiful to me. For the first time in my life, I think, I took a flower in my hands and examined it to see how it was made. A great and new curiosity filled me. How beautiful the world was, and all things in it; how short the time to find out all that there was to be known about all those beautiful things! And what an ignoble basis of ignorance I must start from if I was to "find out," and to "understand!" There filled me a sense of unworthiness and a strong desire for self-improvement.

"I must learn the names of some of these things," I thought, and I began to read the labels which stood among the flowers and shrubbery, for in such matters my mother was very strict and particular: _Abeleia grandiflora, Laurestinus, Olea fragrans, Ligustrum napalense, Rosa watsoniana_---- Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer. Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions of buds no bigger than the eggs in a shad roe. Yes, it was a rose. I looked at the drop of blood on the ball of my thumb, and thought what a beautiful color it was, and how gladly, if need be, I would shed every drop of it for Her.

Dark smoke began to pour from the kitchen chimney, and I knew that the cook was down. Hilda must have seen me in the garden, for she was setting a place for me at one end of the big dining-table. How fresh and clean she always looked and how tidy. Almost you might have thought that her hair was carved from some rich brown substance. It was always as neat as the hair of a statue.

"Good morning, Hilda."

"Good morning, Mr. Archie."

"How about breakfast?"

"It will be ready directly."

"Wish you'd give me a long glass of Apollinaris with a lot of ice in it."

"With pleasure."

I heard her pounding ice in the pantry and then the pop as the bottle came open. She stood behind my chair while I drank. And somehow I got the feeling that she was smiling. I turned my head quickly. She was smiling, but tremulously, almost as if she was going to cry.

"What's the matter, Hilda--have I forgotten to brush the back of my hair?"

"No, sir--it's----"

"It's _what_?"

"Nothing, sir--only----"

"Don't be silly---- Tell me."

She told me, and for a moment, so odd was her statement, I thought she must have gone out of her mind.

"The window of my room," she said, "is just over one of the windows of yours."

I didn't know what to say. I really thought she must be slightly deranged. I said lamely: "Which window?"

"The one by your bed, the one you always leave open so's the air can get to you."

"Well, Hilda, what about it?"

"Sometimes I hear you talking in your sleep, and then I lean out of my window and listen."

With this admission she blushed crimson and no longer looked me in the eyes.

"Do you think that's quite fair?"

"I don't lead a very full life, Mr. Archie."

"And my unconscious prattle helps to fill it? Do I often talk in my sleep?"

"You talked last night."

Her voice was full of meaning and somehow I felt chilled and no longer so very gay and happy.

"What did I talk about?"

"About a lady."

With humiliation I realized that I was now turning red; but I laughed, and said: "We look like a couple of boiled lobsters, Hilda. What did I say about the lady?"

"You said--I only thought you ought to know that I know--so's--well so's you can keep that window shut, and fix it so no one else will know."

I felt like a convicted criminal.

"Did I--mention the lady's name?"

She nodded. "You were talking about Mrs. Fulton," she said in a low voice, "only you didn't call her that."

"Hilda," I said firmly. "Mrs. Fulton and I are very old friends--nothing more."

I could see that she didn't believe me, and I changed my tactics. "You'll not talk, Hilda?"

Her face had resumed its natural color, and she now looked me once more in the eyes. "I'd sooner die than hurt you, Mr. Archie."

"Why, Hilda----!"

All this time I had been sitting and talking over my shoulder, but now I got quickly out of my chair, and drew her hands away from her face. "Oh, Hilda, I _am_ so sorry. What _can_ I do? I'm so sorry, Hilda, and so proud, too."

She looked up at that.

"You poor child! I feel like a dog, a miserable dog!"

"You couldn't help it, Mr. Archie. You can't help being you. Can you?"

She tried to smile.

"How long," I asked, "has it been like this?"

"Ever since the day I came--three years and two hundred and twenty-one days ago--and I heard you say to Mrs. Mannering--to your mother--'Mother,' you said, 'that new maid is as pretty as a picture.' And that did it!"

"Hilda," I said as quietly as I could, "I'm more touched and flattered than I can express. I'll be a good friend to you as long as I live. But--I think I ought to say it, even if it's a cold rough thing to say. I don't believe I'm ever going to feel the same way about you, and so----"

"Oh, I know that, but---- Oh, do you still think I'm pretty?"

"_Indeed_ I do. I've always thought that. Always known that."

"Well," she said, speaking very bravely but with a mouth that quivered, "that's something. I don't lead a very full life, but that's something."

XX

"Mother, are you very busy with those letters?"

"Yes, dear, very."

"I thought so; so put them down and come into the garden. There is a bench where the thyme and eglantine----"

"My dear, you frighten me. What has happened?"

My mother rose, one hand on her bosom.

"Nothing to be frightened about. It's only a little tragedy in a life that isn't very full. Come and talk it over."

I gave her my arm and we strolled into the garden like a pair of lovers.

"Do you remember when Hilda came to us?"

"Perfectly."

"I said to you on that day, 'Mother, the new maid is as pretty as a picture.' Do you remember?"

"No."

"Well, I said it, and Hilda heard me say it, and please don't laugh, it seems that my saying it made the poor child--Oh, care about me. She's cared ever since, and I'm afraid she cares a whole lot."

"How did you get to know?"

"She told me, this morning, practically out of a clear sky. One thing I want to make clear is that it's just as little my fault as it possibly can be. I feel like the devil about it, but I can't for the life of me find one little hook to hang a shred of self-reproach on. My morals aren't what they should be. But I am a fastidious man, and the roof under which my mother lives is to me as the roof of a temple. But you know all this. Now what's to be done? One thing is clear, I can't and won't be amorously waited on. I think the poor child will have to be sent away."

"Oh, dear!" cried my mother, "and just when she's getting to be a perfect servant, and your father so used to her now--says he never knows when she's in the room and when she isn't."

We returned to the house.

"I'll talk it over with her," announced my mother, "and try to decide what's best--best for her, the poor, pretty little thing."

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."