We Three

by Gouverneur Morris

XV

The next day I kept a riding engagement with Lucy, but she didn't.

"She's gone for a walk with John," said Evelyn, who had come out of the house to give me Lucy's messages of regret and apology.

"Lucy gone walking!" I exclaimed. "Have the heavens fallen?"

"Sometimes I think they have," said Evelyn. "But you know more about that than I do."

"Know more about what?"

"Haven't you noticed?"

I shook my head.

"Why, John is all up in the air about something or other, and Lucy is worried sick about him. I thought probably she'd told you what the trouble was. I've asked. She said probably money had something to do with it; and that was all I could get out of her. Come down off that high horse and talk to me. I'm not riding till four."

So I left my pony standing at the front gate and Evelyn and I strolled about the grounds.

"Money isn't the whole trouble," said Evelyn presently. "I know that. Something even more serious has gone terribly wrong. And I want to help."

"Won't they work it out best by themselves?" I suggested.

"Sometimes," she said, "it seems almost as if they had quarreled. Sometimes John looks at her—Oh, as if he was going to die and was looking at her for the last time. Could he have something serious the matter with him?"

"He could, of course, but it doesn't seem likely."

"He doesn't look well."

"True."

"Look here, Archie, don't you know what's wrong?"

"I wish I did," said I. "If I could right it."

As a matter of fact I didn't know what was wrong. I knew only that Lucy no longer loved her husband. But why she no longer loved him was the real trouble, and she had not told me that, even if she knew It herself. But wishing to strengthen my answer, I said: "You're the one who ought to know what's wrong. You're on the spot. And besides, you're a woman and a woman is supposed to have three intuitions to a man's one."

Evelyn ignored this.

"Sometimes," she said, "John's so gentle and pathetic that I want to cry. Sometimes he is cantankerous and flies into rages about trifles. It's getting on my nerves."

"Why not pack up your duds and move on?"

"Oh, because——"

I laughed maliciously. "We might move on together," I suggested.

"You were going to move on," she said, "but you have stayed. I wonder why?"

I did not enlighten her.

"If," she said presently, "people find out that things in this house are at sixes and sevens I wonder if they won't find fault with you and Lucy? Has that occurred to you?"

"It has occurred to you," I said, "to my own mamma and doubtless to other connections. But it hasn't occurred to me. We see too much of each other?"

"Altogether."

"You really think that?"

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders. "For appearance' sake, yes," she said. "Of course you do. But it's my opinion that if you'd been going to get sentimental about each other you'd have done it long ago."

"Evelyn," I said, "I've never made trouble in a family."

"Is that because of your natural virtue or because you have never wanted to?"

"A little of both, I think. People fall in love at first sight. That can't be helped. Or they fall in love very quickly, and that's hard to help. But people who fall in love gradually through long association have no good excuse for doing so, if they oughtn't. They should see it coming and quit seeing each other before it's too late."

"But I don't agree," said Evelyn. "I think love is always a first-sight affair. I don't mean necessarily the first time two people see each other, but that suddenly after years of association even, they will see each other in a new light."

"A light that was never on sea or land?"

"A light that is always where people are, just waiting to be turned on."

At that moment we heard Dawson Cooper's voice calling: "Hallo there! Where are you?"

Presently he hove into sight, and did not seem altogether pleased at finding Evelyn and me together.

"Archie thought he was going to ride with Lucy," Evelyn explained, "but she threw him down, and I suppose we have got to ask him to ride with us!"

"Yes," I said, "I think you have, but I don't have to accept, do I? You're just doing it so's not to hurt my feelings, aren't you? Of course if you really want me——"

"Come along, Coops," said Evelyn. "He's trying to tease us. He wouldn't ride with us for a farm."

We separated at the mounting-block, and I watched them a little way down the road. And felt a little touch of envy. Evelyn was looking very alluring that afternoon.

I rode in the opposite direction until I came to the big open flat north of the racetrack; there, a long way off, I saw John Fulton and Lucy walking slowly side by side. John was sabering dead weed stalks with his stick. So I turned east to avoid them, then north, until I had passed the forlorn yellow pesthouse with its high, deer-park fence, and was well out in the country.

Then I left the main road, and followed one tortuous sandy track after another. Suddenly Heroine shied. I looked up from a deep, aimless reverie, and saw sitting at the side of a trail a withered old negress. She looked like a monkey buried in a mound of rags.

"Evening, Auntie," I said.

"Evening, boss."

Heroine had broken into a sweat, and was trembling. She kept her eyes on the old negress and her ears pointed at her, her nostrils widely dilated.

"My horse thinks you're a witch, Auntie," I said. "Hope you'll excuse her."

"I allows I got ter, boss, caze that's jes what I is."

"Honest to Gospel?" I laughed.

"You got fifty cents, boss?"

I found such a coin in my pocket and tossed it to her.

"I used to have," I said.

She rose to her feet and Heroine drew away from her, firmly and rudely.

"Don' min' me, honey," said the old woman, and she held out a hand like a monkey's paw. To my astonishment Heroine began to crane her head toward the hand, sniffed at it presently, gave a long sigh of relief and stood at ease, muscles relaxed, and eyelids drooping.

"Now I believe you," I said. "What else can you do?"

She turned her bright, beady eyes this way and that, searching perhaps for anyone who might be watching and listening. Then she said, "I kin tell fo'tunes, boss."

"Just tell me my name."

"You is Mista Mannering, boss."

"Hum, that's too easy," I said. "I've been coming to Aiken a great many years. What is my horse's name?"

"Her name is He'win, boss."

"Hum," I said and felt a little creepy feeling of wonder.

"Does you want to know any mo'?"

I nodded.

"You's flighty, boss, but you ain't bad. You is goin' ter be lucky in love, 'n then you is goin' ter be unlucky. You is goin' ter risk gettin' shot, but dere ain't goin' ter be no shootin'. When summer come around you is goin' ter have sorrer in you' breas', and when winter comes around dere'll be de same ole sorrer, a twistin' and a gnawin'."

"What sort of a sorrow, Auntie?"

"Sorrer like when you strikes a lil chile what ain't done no harm, only seem like he done harm, sorrer like you feels w'en you baby dies, 'case you is too close-fisted ter sen' fer de doctor, sorrer like——"

She broke off short, looking a little dazed and foolish.

"You've had your share of sorrow, Auntie, I can see that."

"Is I a beas' o' de fiel'?" she exclaimed indignantly, "or is I a humanous bein'?"

"Must all human beings have sorrows?"

"Yes, boss, but each has he own kin'! Big man has big sorrer, little man have little sorrer, and dem as is middlin' men dey has middlin' sorrers."

"It's all one," I said, "each gets what he can stand and no more. Put a big sorrow on a little man and he'd break under it; put a little sorrow on a big man and he wouldn't know that he was carrying it. What else can you tell me, Auntie?"

"I ain't goin' ter tell yo' no mo'."

"Not for another half-dollar?"

"No, boss."

"Well, there it is anyway. Good evening."