XVI
I was surprised to find John Fulton in the Club. As a home-loving man he was not a frequent visitor. He had dropped in, he said, to get a game of bridge, had tired of waiting for somebody to cut out, and had been reading the newspapers to find out how the world was getting along.
"I haven't more than glanced at them in a week," he said, "but there's nothing new, is there? Just new variations of public animosity and domestic misfortunes. Have you read this Overman business?"
"I haven't."
"It's a case or a hard-working, thoroughly respectable man who, for no reason that is known, suddenly shoots down his wife and children in cold blood, and then blows his own head to smithereens."
"But of course there was a reason," I said; "he must have felt that he was justified."
"He seems to have had enough money and good health. And he passed for a sane, matter-of-fact sort of fellow."
"If it was the regular reason," I said, "jealousy, he wouldn't have hurt the children."
"Only a very unhappy man could kill his children," said Fulton. "His idea would be to save them from such unhappiness as he himself had experienced. But in nine cases out of ten it would be a mistaken kindness. Causes similar to those which drove the father into a despair of unhappiness would in all probability affect the children less. No two persons enjoy to the same degree, suffer to the same degree or are tempted alike. How many wronged husbands are there who swallow their trouble and endure to one who shoots?"
"Legions," I said. "Fortunately. Otherwise one could hardly sleep for the popping of pistols."
"Do you believe that or do you say it to be amusing?"
"I think that the number of husbands who find out that they have been wronged is only exceeded by the number who never even suspect it. But they are not the husbands we know, the modern novelist to the contrary notwithstanding. In our class it is the wives who are wronged as a rule; in the lower classes, the husbands. I've known hundreds of what the newspapers call society people; the women are good, with just enough exceptions to prove the rule: the men aren't."
"When you say that the women are good, you mean they are technically good?"
"Who is technically good?"
"Hallo, Harry!"
Colemain, having pushed a bell, pulled up a big chair and joined us.
"We were saying that the average woman we know is technically good."
"You bet she is!" said Colemain. "She has to be! If she wasn't how could she ever put over the things she does put over? And as a rule her husband isn't technically good and so she has power over him. She says nothing, but he knows that she knows, and so when she does something peculiarly extravagant and outrageous, he reaches meekly for his checkbook. For one man who is ruined by drink there are ten ruined by women; and not by the kind of women who are supposed to ruin men either; not by the street-walker, the chorus girl or the demi-mondaine. American men are ruined by their wives and daughters who are technically good. Don't we know dozens of cases? When there is a crash in Wall Street how many well-to-do married men go to smash to one well-to-do bachelor? A marriage isn't a partnership. It's the opposite except in name. It's a partnership in which the junior partner gives her whole mind to extracting from the business sums of money which ought to go back into it. And she spends those sums almost invariably on things which diminish in value the moment they are bought. It isn't the serpent that is the arch enemy of mankind. It's the pool in which Eve first saw that she was beautiful, or would be if she could only get her fig-leaf skirt to hang right."
"But I think," said Fulton gently, "that women ought to have pretty clothes, and bright jewels and luxuries. If a girl loves a man, and proves it and keeps on loving him, how is it possible for him to pay her back short of ruining himself? Haven't you ever felt that if the whole world was yours to give you'd give it gladly? Why complain then when afterwards you are only asked to give that infinitesimal portion of the world that happens at the moment to be yours? If a man is ruined for his wife, if cares shorten his life, even then he has done far, far less than he once said he was willing and eager to do."
He looked at the big clock over the mantelpiece, sat silent for a moment, then rose, wished us good-night and went out.
"You wouldn't think," said Harry, "to hear him talk that a woman was playing chuck-cherry with that infinitesimal portion of the world that happens to be his. I was in the bank this morning and I saw him come out of the President's room. He looked a little as if he'd just identified the body of a missing dear one in the morgue."
"I'm afraid he is frightfully hard up," I said, "but he hasn't said anything to me about it, and I don't like to volunteer."
"He's a good man," said Harry, "one of the few really good men I know, and it's a blamed shame."
"Oh, it will all come out in the wash."
"It depends on how dirty the linen is!"
"American men," I said, "never seem to have the courage to retrench. Why not take your family to a cheap boarding-house for a year or two? Cut the Gordian knot and get right down to bed rock? Boarding-house food may be bad for the spirit, but it's good for the body. My father had dyspepsia one spring, and his doctor told him to spend six weeks in a summer hotel—any summer hotel—and take all his meals in it."
Just then one of the bell-boys interrupted us. He said that Mrs. Fulton wished to speak with me. He followed me into the coat room, where the telephone is, in a persistent sort of way, so that I turned on him rather sharply and asked what he wanted.
His eyes were bulging with a look of importance and his black face had an expression of mystery. "She ain't on de telephone," he said, "she's outside."
"Well, why couldn't you say so?"
I went out bareheaded into the dusk and walked quickly between the bedded hyacinths and the evergreen hedges of Carolina cherry to the sidewalk. But she wasn't there. Far up the street I saw a familiar horse and buggy, and a whip that signaled to me.
She was all alone. Even Cornelius Twombley, as much a part of the buggy as one of the wheels, had been dropped off somewhere.
"I haven't seen you all day," she said. "I thought maybe you'd like to go for a little drive."
I simply climbed into the buggy and sat down beside her.
"Evelyn and Dawson," she explained, "were crowding the living-room, so I thought of this. Is John in the Club?"
"He was, but he said good-night to Harry Colemain and me, and I think he went home.… How is everything? I saw you and John from afar, walking together. I knew you could run because I've seen you play tennis, but I didn't suppose you'd ever learned to walk. You're always either on a horse or behind one."
"Was it very bold of me to come to the Club for you? I suppose I ought to have telephoned." Then she laughed. "I ought to have had more consideration of your reputation," she said.
"My reputation will survive," I said. "But look here, Lucy——"
"I'm looking!"
"I meant look with your mind. I don't know if I ought to bring it up; it's just gossip. Harry saw John coming out of the President's room in the bank. He said it looked to him as if John had been trying to make a touch and hadn't gotten away with it. You know I hate to see him distressed for money, especially now when other things are distressing him, and I wonder if there isn't some tactful arrangement by which I could let him have some money without his knowing that it came from me."
"Aren't you good!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I suppose he makes things out as bad as he can so as to influence me as much as possible; but he says we are in a terrible hole, that we oughtn't to have come here at all, that if he'd had any idea how much money I'd been spending in New York before we came he wouldn't have considered coming, that everybody is hounding him for money, and that he doesn't see how he can possibly pay his bills at the end of the season. Of course it's mostly my fault; but I can't help it if the Democrats are in power and business is bad, can I?"
"Well," I said, "I'm flush just now and I'll think up a scheme. Meanwhile let's forget about everything that isn't pleasant. Where are you going to drive me?"
"I don't care. Let's get away from the lights. What time is it? John doesn't like me to be late; and besides I haven't kissed the kiddies good-night. Let's just take a little dip in the woods. On a hot night it's almost like going for a swim. Oughtn't you to have a hat or something? If you get cold you can put the cooler on like a shawl."
Her manner affected me as it had never affected me before.
The dip from the hot dusk of the dusty road into the cool midnight of the pine woods had all the exhilaration of an adventure. The fact that she had sent into the Club for me flattered my vanity. She wanted me and not another to be with her. I felt a tenderness for her that I had never felt before. I wanted a chance to show that I understood her and was her friend without qualification. Shoulder touched shoulder now and then and it seemed to me as if I was being appealed to by that contact for support, countenance, and protection.
We chattered about the night and the pale stars, and the smells of flowers. We wished that there was no such thing as dinner, that the woods lasted forever, and that we might drive on through the soft perfumed air until we came to the end of them.
Then there was quite a long silence, and for the first time in my life I experienced the wish, well, not to kiss her, but to lay my cheek against hers. It was a wish singularly hard to resist.
"I suppose we ought to turn back."
"You know best," I said.
"Do you want to?"
"No, do you?"
"No."
But we turned back and came up out of the woods into the lights of the town.
"Where shall I drop you—at the Club?"
"Let me drop you," I said, "and borrow your buggy afterward to take me home. You ought not to drive alone at night."
"Maybe it would be better if I did," she said.
We said good-night at the door of her house, but not easily. For once it seemed hard to say anything final.
"Was I very brazen," she said, "to ask you to go with me, when I didn't want to be alone?"
"You were not," I said, "it was sweet of you. I loved it."
Cornelius Twombly lunged from the black shadow of a cedar tree and went to the horse's head.
"Good-night, Lucy. Good luck!"
Just then we heard John calling.
"That you, Lucy? You're late. I was getting anxious."
We could see him coming down the path, a vague shadow among the shadows, his cigarette burning brightly.
"Hallo, who is it? I can't see."
"It's Archie Mannering," said Lucy.
"Oh, is it? Won't you come in?"
"Can't, thanks. Got to dress. Lovely night, isn't it? Good-night. Good-night, Lucy."
When I had driven a little way I turned and looked over my shoulder, but though I could only see the fire of John's cigarette, I imagined that I could see his face—a little puzzled, a little anxious, and very sad.
It was on that same night that he said to Lucy: "Aren't you seeing a good deal of Archie Mannering?"
And she answered:
"Am I? I suppose I am. I like him awfully."