"The same, I reckon. He'll be paying me a visit soon, and I've got my crumbs ready." He smiled brightly and then sat with his chin on his crutch, looking steadily across the road. "You haven't had your chance, my boy," he resumed presently; "and a man ought to have several chances to look round him in this world, for otherwise the things he misses will always seem to him the only things worth having. I'm not much of a fellow to preach, you'll say—a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh that can't dress itself nor hobble about without crutches that are strapped on- -but if it's the last word I speak I wouldn't change a day in my long life, and if it came to going over it again I'd trust it all in the Lord's hands and start blindfolded. And yet, when I look back upon it now, I see that it wasn't much of a life as lives go, and the two things I wanted most in it I never got."
Christopher turned quickly with a question.
"Oh, you think I have always been a contented, prosaic chap," pursued Tucker, smiling, "but you were never more mistaken since you were born. Twice in my life I came mighty near blowing out my brains—once when I found that I couldn't go to Paris and be an artist, and the second time when I couldn't get the woman I wanted for my wife. I wasn't cut out for a farmer, you see, and I had always meant from the time I was a little boy to go abroad and study painting. I'd set my heart on it, as people say, but when the time came my father died and I had to stay at home to square his debts and run the place. For a single night I was as clean crazy as a man ever was. It meant the sacrifice of my career, you know, and a career seemed a much bigger thing to me then than it does to-day."
"I never heard that," said Christopher, lowering his voice.
"There's a lot we don't know even about the people we live in a little house with. You never heard, either, I dare say, that I was so madly in love once that when the woman threw me over for a better man I shut myself up in a cabin in the woods and did not speak to a human being for six months. I was a rare devil, sure enough, though you'd never believe it to see me now. It took two blows like that, a four years' war, and the surgeon's operating table to teach me how to be happy."
"It was Miss Matoaca Bolling, I suppose?" suggested Christopher, with a mild curiosity.
The old soldier broke into his soft, full laugh.
"Matoaca! Bless your soul, no. But to think that Lucy should have kept a secret for more than thirty years! Never talk to me again about a woman's letting anything out. If she's got a secret that it mortifies her to tell it will be buried in the grave with her, and most likely it will never see the light at judgment Day. Lucy was always ashamed of my being jilted, you know."
"It's a new story then, is it?"
"Oh, it's as old as the hills by now. What's the funny part, though, is that Lucy has always tried to persuade herself it was really Matoaca I cared for. You know, I sometimes think that a woman can convince herself that black is white if she only keeps trying hard enough—and it's marvellous that she never sees the difference between wanting to believe a thing and believing it in earnest. Now, if Matoaca had been the last woman on this earth, and I the last man, I could never have fallen in love with her, though I may as well confess that I had my share of fancies when I was young. It's no use attempting to explain a man's feelings, of course. Matoaca was almost as great a belle as Lucy, and she was the handsomest creature you ever laid eyes on—one of those big, managing women who are forever improving things around them. Why, I don't believe she could stay two seconds in a man's arms without improving the set of his cravat. Some men like that kind of thing, but I never did, and I often think the reason I went so mad about the other woman was that she came restful after Matoaca. She was the comforting kind, who, you might be sure, always saw you at your best; and no matter the mood you were in, she never wanted to pat and pull you into shape. Lucy always said she couldn't hold a candle to Matoaca in looks, and I suppose she was right; but, pretty or plain, that girl had something about her that went straight to my heart more than thirty years ago and stays there still. Strange to say, I've tried to believe that it was half compassion, for she always reminded me of a little wild bird that somebody had caught and shut up in a cage, and it used to seem to me sometimes that I could almost hear the fluttering of her soul. Well, whatever it was, the feeling was the sort that is most worth while, though she didn't think so, of course, and broke her great heart over another man. She married him and had six children and died a few years ago. He was a fortunate fellow, I suppose, and yet I can't help fancying that I've had the better part and the Lord was right. She was not happy, they said, and he knew it, and yet had to face those eyes of hers every day. It was like many other marriages, I reckon; he got used to her body and never caught so much as a single glimpse of her soul. Then she faded away and died to him, but to me she's just the same as when I first saw her, and I still believe that if she could come here and sit on this old bench I should be perfectly happy. It's a lucky man, I tell you, who can keep the same desire for more than thirty years."