VI
I was feeling very sentimental by the time I got to bed. I had had a long, and I suppose maudlin, talk with Harry Colemain on the beauties of matrimony. We had maintained the Fultons against all comers, as our ideal example of that institution.
"Just think," I said, "this very night is the first one that John has been away from her since they were married. That's going some. That's some record. He boarded the train like a man mounting the scaffold to have his head chopped off."
I almost cried over the touching picture which I felt I had drawn.
"There aren't many couples like them," Harry agreed wistfully. "But I bet even you and I had it in us to be decent and faithful if we'd ever struck the right girl. Those things are the purest luck, and we've been unlucky. But it makes me sick to be as old as we are, and no nearer home than the day we left college."
"When that baby was asleep in my lap—did I tell you about that?"
"Twice," said Harry mournfully.
I didn't believe him, and related the episode again. "It was wonderful," I said; "she was like a little stove with a fire in it. She made me feel so trusted and tender that I could have put back my head and bawled like a wolf. Think of having babies like that for your very own, and a wife like Lucy Fulton thrown in."
"She could have married most anybody," said Harry, "but she took a poor man and a rank outsider because she—hic—loved him. That's the kind of girl she is! Why nobody ever thought she'd settle to anybody. I bet she broke her word to half a dozen men, before she gave it to Fulton and kept it."
"I wouldn't call him exactly an outsider," I said; "anyway she's made an insider of him. Everybody likes him, and admires him. I never thought much of him at school, but I think he's a peach now. And he understands everything you say to him."
"He understands a good deal more than we'll ever be able to say to him. He's got brains. Evelyn Gray is staying with them."
"I know she is. I dined there last night. She's looking very pretty."
"She is pretty," said Harry, "and she's got pretty hands and feet; most pretty women haven't. It's usually the woman with a face that would stop a clock that has pretty feet."
"Like Mrs. Deering," I suggested.
"Exactly," he said. "But Deering is no fool."
"How do you mean he isn't a fool?"
"Why," said Harry, "he makes her sleep with her feet on the pillow."
This struck me as very funny, and I laughed until I had forgotten what I was laughing at. Harry got laughing, too, after a while. He put his whole soul in it. Then we ordered two bottles of ale and had some fat wood put on the fire, and watched it roar and sputter with flame as only fat wood can. After much meditation and a swallow of the fresh-brought ale, my mind began to harp on Evelyn Gray, and to magnify her good looks and attractions. So I said:
"Harry, why don't you marry Evelyn?"
For a moment he scowled at the fire. Then he spoke in a bitter voice.
"Suppose I wanted to, and she wanted to," he said, "still we couldn't."
"Why not?" I asked innocently, expecting, I think, that his phrase was some sort of a conundrum.
"Why, Archie, my boy," he said, and his scowl faded to a look of weariness and disgust, "it looks as if I might have to marry somebody else."
"Not——?"
He nodded. And presently he said, "It will be best for her—of course."
"But I haven't heard even a rumor. Has he started anything?"
"No. He's a decentish little chap. He's trying to make up his mind whether to divorce her or be divorced himself. It hinges on the children. If he divorces her he'll get them, and if he lets himself be divorced, she will."
"It's big trouble, Harry!"
"Yes. For we are sick and tired of each other. I'd rather like to blow my head off."
"But if she divorces him, you needn't marry her."
He rose slowly to his full height and held out his hand. "I'm going to turn in," he said. "Good night."
"Good night, Harry. I'm sorry for you, you know that."
"I only have my deserts," he said. "Sensible men, like you, steer clear of family complications."
When he had gone I had another bottle of ale in front of the fire, and from thinking of Harry, I got to thinking of how well ale seemed to go on top of whiskey, and to congratulating myself on my strong head and stomach. "Nobody," I thought complacently, "would suspect that I had been drinking." Then I got to thinking once more about Evelyn Gray. It was time I settled down, why not with Evelyn—if only to prove to her that the truths she had told me about myself weren't true? I began to fancy that I had in me all the qualities that go to make the ideal husband, and that in Evelyn were to be found all the qualities which make the ideal wife. I could have wept to think what a good sportsman she was, and how Pilgrim-father honest.
On her writing-desk my mother has three little monkeys carved in ivory. One has his hands clapped to his ears, one to his eyes, and the other to his mouth. Their names are "Hear no Evil," "See no Evil," and "Speak no Evil."
I have to pass her door to get to my room. But late at night that door is never left ajar. She is not the kind of mother who puts in a sudden (and wholly accidental!) appearance when her son is coming home a little the worse for wear. She has never seen me the worse for wear (and I'm not very often), and if she has her way (and I have mine) she never will.
"What in thunderation started you last night?" said my father at breakfast.
"I'm hanged if I know," I said; "but what makes you think I got started?"
"I'd just put out the lights in the library when you came in. You stopped in front of the hall mirror, and said:
"Beautiful Evelyn Gray is dead
Come and sit by her side an hour."
"I didn't," I exclaimed indignantly.
My father began to chuckle all over like Santa Claus in the Christmas poem.
"You mean beautiful Evelyn Hope, don't you?" I asked.
"Gray was the name."
"I'd like to know what you were doing up so late?"
"Oh, we had a big night—three tables of bridge and one of poker. I sat up late to count my winnings."
"How much did you drop, as a matter of fact?"
"Only about eighty."
"Any twinges this morning?"
"No, sir. And a better appetite than you've got."
"I doubt that."
And, indeed, we both ate very hearty breakfasts.