XXVII
"What did he say?"
Her face was brilliant with excitement and anxiety. And I told her as well as I could.
"He was preternaturally calm and easy," I said; "I couldn't imagine a man being more well-bred about anything. But he won't say anything definite now. Of course, he ought to have time to think. We could have counted on that, if we'd thought. He will take plenty of time to make up his mind, and then he won't change it. But Lord, I'm glad he knows now; and from us."
There was a quiet knocking on the half-open door of the living-room.
"Come in.… Oh, John, you needn't have knocked."
He came in slowly and quietly, a gentle smile on his lips. The gray granite look had softened into his natural coloring.
"I must say you're a very handsome pair," he said. "Don't go just yet, Archie. If we three are to talk things over in the future, we had better have a little tentative practice. Are we three the only ones who know of this sensational development?"
"And Schuyler," I said.
"Is he for you or against you?"
"We thought we could be just great friends and see each other once in a while. He was for that. But, of course, that was only romantic nonsense."
"Yes, that was nonsense," said Fulton. "It would have made my position altogether too ridiculous. Did it occur to you to be great friends, and not see each other?"
"John," exclaimed Lucy, "you don't understand."
"I don't understand the importance which lovers attach to love? Well, perhaps not. Drunkards hate to cure themselves of drink; smokers of smoke; lovers of love. Yet all these appetites can be cured, often to the immense benefit of the sufferers and of everybody concerned. And so you thought you could lead two lives at once, Lucy?"
"I did think so."
"Gathering strength in romantic byways to see you through the prosy thoroughfares? It wouldn't have worked."
"We know that now."
"You couldn't have lied about every meeting with Archie—lied as to where you were going and where you had been. Truth comes natural to you, even if you seem to have fallen down on some of the other virtues."
I knew that he was laboring under a great strain. And yet for the life of me I could not read any symptoms of that laboring in his face or voice. His voice was easy, casual, and tinged with humor. It was almost as if he was relieved to find two such inconsequential persons as Lucy and myself at the bottom of his troubles. Now and then his left eyebrow arched high on his forehead, and there would be a sharp sudden glance in the corresponding eye.
"I wonder," he said, turning to me, "if people in your situation ever look at it from the critical outsider's point of view. Have you considered that a passion for something forbidden is not a natural, not a respectable passion? According to all moral and social laws Lucy is a forbidden object for your love and vice versa. People are not going to think well of you two."
"Oh, we know that," said Lucy, wearily.
"My dear Lucy, you mustn't show signs of distress so early in the game. What we are discussing, or trying to throw a little light on, is the subject which just now, by all accounts, should interest you more than anything else in the world. Furthermore, I really must insist on consideration for myself and the children."
"No amount of talk ever made me do right—or wrong," said Lucy; "I just do right or wrong, and of course you think this is wrong. So what's the use?"
"Think it wrong," exclaimed Fulton, "of course I do. Don't you?" His voice expressed almost horrified surprise. "Don't you think it wrong to fall out of love with your husband, into love with another man, and to take no more interest in your children than if they were a couple of wooden dolls made in Germany?"
"Caring enough makes everything right," she said, still wearily, as if the whole subject bored her.
"Caring enough!" exclaimed John. "Oh, caring enough makes everything right. But do you care enough—either of you? I may change my mind, but just now, as a man fighting for what little happiness there may be left for him in the world, this question of how much you care is the crux of the whole matter. If I thought that you cared enough I'd take my hat off to the exception which proves the rule that all illicit passions are wrong. If I thought that you cared enough I'd think that a great wonder had come to pass in the world, and I'd give you my blessing and tell you to go your ways."
Lucy rose and went appealingly to him. "John, dear," she said, "we do care enough."
He turned to me quickly.
"And you think that?"
"I care enough," I said, "so that nothing else matters—not even the hurt to you."
"Do you care so much that no argument will change you?"
I think Lucy and I must both have smiled at him.
"No pressure of opposition?"
"Caring is supposed to thrive on opposition, isn't it?" said I.
"In short," said John, "if I refuse to be divorced you care enough to run away together into social ostracism?"
Lucy smiled at me and I smiled back at her. And at that Fulton's calmness left him for a moment.
"My God," he cried, "I am up against it."
But almost instantly he had himself once more in hand, and was speaking again in level, almost cheerful tones.
"Social ostracism," he said, "would be very horrid if you stopped caring for each other."
"Why take it for granted that we'd stop caring?"
"I don't. I'm taking nothing for granted. But no girl, Archie, ever cared for a man more than Lucy cared for me—and then she stopped caring. I know less about your stamina. But this is not the first time you've cared."
"It's the first time I've really cared," I said.
"It's not the first time you've said that you really cared, is it?"
I was unable to answer, and his eyes twinkled with a kind of automatic amusement. Then once more grave, "I never even thought," he said, "that I ever cared about anyone but Lucy. That gives me a peculiar advantage in passing judgment on matters of caring—an advantage enjoyed neither by you nor Lucy. I wasn't any more her first flame than she is yours. But she was my first and only flame. I can speak with a troop of faithful years at my back. But you and she have only been faithful to each other for a matter of days. I am not doubting the intensity of your inclination, but I can't help asking, Will it last? Are you prepared to swear that you will love her and no other all your days?"
"Yes," I said firmly. And I loved her so much at that moment that I felt purified in so saying and believing.
"How about you, Lucy'? Never mind, don't answer. You are thinking of that day when you stood up before all our friends and swore that you would love me all your days. Naturally it would embarrass you to repeat that with respect to another, before my face. So I won't ask you to …"
"John," said Lucy, "all this is so obvious. And it leads nowhere. Talk won't change us. So won't you please say what you are going to do?"
"Not until I know myself," he said. "But there is one thing … I think it would be better all round if you saw less of each other until something is decided. I realize that Jock and Hurry and I are very much in the way. Jock and Hurry naturally don't care how much you two are together. But I do. It isn't that I don't trust you out of my sight. You know that. But the mind of a jealous man is a gallery hung with intolerable pictures. Merely to think of Lucy, Archie, giving you the same look that she used to have for me is to burn in hell-fire."
He turned on his heel, and left us abruptly. We could hear him calling to the nurse to ask how Hurry was feeling, and we could hear his steps going up the stair to the nursery.
"He's going to do the right thing, Lucy," I said.
"I wish he wouldn't talk and talk. The milk's spilled. I suppose we've got to keep more or less apart."
"Yes, Lucy."
I held out my arms, and for a moment we made, I suppose, one of those intolerable pictures that hung in Fulton's mental gallery. And then I went away.
It was good to have told. I was very deeply in love; I thought that Lucy's and my future could soon be smoothed into shape, but I did not feel happy. I felt as if I had been through a great ordeal of some sort, and had come off second best. It seemed to me that I ought to have stood up more loudly for my love, for its intensity and power to endure.
In addition there had been about John Fulton an ominous quiet. I could better have endured a violent outbreak. For there is no action without its reaction. After a storm there is calm. But Fulton's calm was more like that which precedes a storm.
His breakdown came after I had left. Lucy told me about it. He had come back to her in the living-room, and said things about me that she would never never forgive.
"I don't care what he says about me," she cried, "but if he talks to me against you, I won't stand it."
"It's natural for him to feel bitter against me. I'm sorry, of course. But it doesn't matter."
"If he's got to feel bitter, let him feel bitter against me. If anyone is to blame, I am to blame."
"What did he say about me?" I asked.
"He said you were the kind of man that men didn't count when they were counting up the number of men they knew. He said you had always been too idle to keep out of mischief. And that no pretty woman would be safe from you—if you weren't afraid … Afraid!"
"That's quite an indictment."
"I said: 'Why didn't you say all that to his face, when he was here, instead of waiting till you could say it behind his back …'"
Here she turned to me with the most wonderful look of tenderness and trust.
"But I know what I know. And you are the kindest and the truest and the gentlest man …"
"Oh, I'm not! I'm not, Lucy!… But what does that matter, if I never let you find out the difference?… We mustn't take what John says too seriously. He's had enough trouble to warp his mind."
She still looked up into my face with that wonderful trust and tenderness. "And you are the most generous man to another man!" she said.