XXXI
My parents, loafing North, via Hot Springs, were delighted to see me. As soon as courtesy to my mother made it possible, I got my father aside, and told him that my real purpose in coming was to raise the wind.
"I need a lot of money," I said; "sooner or later you'll know why. So I may as well tell you."
My father's fine weather-beaten face of a country squire expressed an interest at once frankly affectionate and tinged with a kind of detached cynicism.
"I am going to run off with Lucy Fulton," I said.
"I supposed that was it," said my father, without evincing the least surprise.
"You did?"
"Oh, we old fellows put an ear to the ground now and then," he explained; "and sometimes sleep with one eye open. Punch's advice to the young couple about to marry was 'Don't.' My advice to you and Lucy is double don't. Why not give yourselves a year to think it all over, as John Fulton so sanely and generously suggests?"
Astonishment at my father's superhuman knowledge of events must have showed in my face. Still smiling with frank affection, he said, "John put me in touch with the whole situation before he left Aiken. The year of probation was my suggestion to him."
"But Lucy and I can't agree."
"Then you can't. Do you sail, fly, entrain, or row—and when?"
"We sail, father, next Wednesday."
"A week from today. I am profoundly sorry. It's very rough on Fulton, just when he has closed with this Russian contract and is by way of getting rich."
"It's our one chance for happiness, father."
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "And I think it is your one sure road to misery."
"But you'll see me through?"
"Come to me a year from today. Tell me that during that time you have neither seen Lucy nor communicated with her, but that you still love each other—then I'll see you through."
"My dear father, it's so much better for you to put up the money than for me to borrow it from one of my friends."
"Only because the friend would expect you to pay him back. How would you live when his money was gone—keep on borrowing?"
"Why, father, you're acting like a parent in an old-fashioned novel. Are you threatening to cut me off?"
"My son," said he, "a man who had done well, and who deserved well of the world came to me and showed me his heart—a heart tormented beyond endurance with unreturned love, with jealousy, and with despair. He threw himself upon my mercy. And I said that I would help him, with whatever power of help I have at command. I don't love that man, my son. I love you. But I am on his side. All my fighting blood is aroused when I learn that still another American husband has been wronged by his wife, and by an idle flirting bachelor. God keep me firm in what must seem to you like cruelty in one to whom you have always turned with the utmost frankness and loyalty in your emergencies. And from whom until this moment you have always received help."
I was appalled and thunderstruck. After a while I said, "Father, she sobbed so that I thought she would break a blood vessel. I couldn't stand it. I had to say I would take her away. If I don't, I think she will die or kill herself."
My father drew himself up very straight, and looked very handsome and stern, for a moment. Then his frame relaxed and his eyes twinkled, and he said, "Die? Kill herself? My grandmother!"
"Oh, father," I cried, "don't! Don't! She is all the world to me. You talk as if——"
"I talk as if she was an excellent example of the modern American wife in what the papers call 'society.' And that is precisely what she is. You know that as well as I do. Just because you love her is no reason for pretending that she's a saint and a martyr and the victim of a grand historical passion. She is lovely to look at. She is charming to be with. But that doesn't prevent her from being a bad little egg."
"Father," I said, as gently as I could, "I love her with all my heart. Why, she's like a little child, and she's being so hurt. You've never refused me anything. Help me to make her happy."
"When she has gotten over her fancy for you, when Fulton has plenty of money for her to spend, she will be as happy as she deserves to be—until she makes herself miserable again by indulging in some affair similar to this. Now, my dear boy, go back to her, tell her that you haven't enough money to elope on and no way of getting it. Tell her also that if at the end of a year's probation you and she still want each other, nobody will oppose you, and that you, on the day of your marriage to her, will be made a rich man in your own right."
"Father, I want her so."
"And I want champagne so," said my father. "And the accursed doctor has forbidden it. Do I torture myself? Not at all. I turn for solace to an excellent bottle of Scotch whiskey. And this has at least the effect of making me want the champagne less. Don't get confused between psychology and physiology. If I were in your boots I'd slip over to Paris—and drink Scotch whiskey."
So I went back to New York, and, as soon as possible, I talked to Lucy over the telephone, and told her about the interview with my father.
"But," I finished, "we'll do whatever you say. We can't very well land in Europe without any money; but I've still got most of the passage money; and if you say so, we can stay right in this country and live on that for a few weeks, while I try to get a job. I could borrow some money, but it would have to be paid back. Oh, Lucy, this is such a humiliating confession to make, but what can I do?"
"Everybody is against us," she said, "everything—I don't suppose there's any use struggling."
She sounded cold and tired.
"I suppose," she went on slowly, "we'll have to wait, the way John says. Shall we?"
"You say it, Lucy. Don't make me say it."
"So we'll wait," she said; "not see each other, and not communicate. I don't see how I can stand it, but I suppose I can.… A whole year—a whole year!"
"At the end of it, my darling, all that there is in the world for me, nobody will stand in our way; there'll be plenty of money and a long life before us."
"Listen … all the long time will you take care of yourself?"
"Yes, Lucy."
"And not notice any other ladies?" …
"Lucy … let's take a chance on what I have got."
A long silence. Then: "Oh, no. I suppose John's right. Everybody's right.… But"—there was a valiant ring in her voice, "we'll show 'em they were wrong and cruel. Won't we?"
"Yes, Lucy."
"Good-by, then, and God bless and keep you."
"It's only for a year, Lucy."
I heard a short, dry sob. It was mine.