We Three

"If they love each other like that," I thought, "why doesn't he always ride with her, or why doesn't she always play golf with him?"

I heard such expressions as "And the new mid-iron" … "The jasmine will be in full bloom in a week." "As we were going to Black Jack" (this is the eighth hole at Aiken, where the holes are all so good that they are spoken of by name instead of by number). "Mr. Mannering is the nicest person to ride with," etc., etc.

Then Fulton remembered my existence. "You'll not go without a drink!" he said.

Mrs. Fulton's eyes confirmed the invitation, so I chucked the reins over my pony's head to make him think that he was tied to a hitching-post, and went into the house with them. But I did not stay long. Fulton wanted to talk golf; Mrs. Fulton wanted to bathe and change into skirts, and I wanted to go away by myself and think. I wanted to study out why it was that toward the end of our ride together, whenever Mrs. Fulton spoke to me or looked back at me over her shoulder, my pulses seemed to quicken—and my breathing.

V

We were at the beginning of those parlous times when the Democrats, having come into power upon a wave of impassioned idiocy and jealousy, were beginning to make us poor at home and despised abroad. A schoolmaster president, with three cabinet officers plucked by the hair from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, had put a temporary end to all our best qualities as a nation, with the possible exception of the power to laugh at jokes.

It was a hectic winter in Aiken. Some of the richest members of the Aiken Club were in trouble. There was some talk of making two and a half cents a point bridge standard instead of five. Even my own father asked me to go a little light, if I could, and not be led into any foolishness. "I've not been hit yet," he said, "but you can't tell what the fools will do next." You heard very few bets made. There was less drinking. It was as if certain men were going into training in order to be at their very best when the worst times should come.

Fulton's Cartridge Company, with its headquarters in New York and its mills in Bridgeport, Connecticut, had not paid a dividend in some time. He had only his salary as president (twenty or twenty-five thousand a year, I believe), and it was with the drastic intention of cutting that salary in two, and otherwise paring the company's expenses to the quick, that he went north the first week in March.

I dined with them the night before he left. There were only four of us: the Fultons, myself, and one of those charming Southampton girls, with sea-blue eyes, and sunburned hair, who swim like seals, play tennis like men, and fear nothing. Evelyn Gray was the name of this particular one. I liked her immensely, and was not altogether sorry to learn that she was to keep Lucy Fulton company until Fulton returned.

But it was a somewhat depressing dinner. There was an atmosphere in the cheerful blue and white dining-room, the white panels of the doors and wainscoting had a narrow border of blue, like impending fate. Fulton, it seemed, had never yet been away from home over night. And this was a record of devotion which he was very loath to break. Even more loath to see it broken was Lucy Fulton.

"I tell him," she said, "that if he goes it will be the beginning of the end." She spoke in jest, and although Fulton laughed back at her you could see that what she had said troubled him and hurt him. "As a matter of fact," she went on, "he's been looking for an excuse for some time. And now he thinks he's found one, but it wouldn't pass in a court of chivalry. He could write to his old directors just as well as not. Oh, you needn't think you're the only one who's going to have a gay time. You needn't be surprised to hear that I, too, have left home in the company of a dark and fascinating foreigner. And anyway I shall give a dance and open all the champagne in the cellar."

"There are only two quarts and a pint," said Fulton, and he turned to me. "You've never been married, have you? So you don't know what the modern woman can spend when she gets going, do you?"

I had a pretty good idea, but did not make the admission and continued to look interrogative.

"Well," he said, smiling, "she just has to spend so much, she says so herself. Then her poor husband's dividends are passed, and still she has to spend so much; she just has to, she says so herself. Then her poor husband's poor salary has to be cut in half, and she speaks calmly of giving dances and opening wine. Evelyn, I count on you as an old and tried friend. If necessary you will interpose your dead body between Lucy and this dance of hers."

Superficially he was very tolerant and good-natured, but you could see that beneath the surface, nerves were jumping, and that he was in that condition of financial and perhaps mental embarrassment which causes molehills to look like mountains. And it was here, and now, that I learned something new about Lucy; that even in jest she did not enjoy having economy preached to her. She looked a little sullen for a moment and bored.

"What's the matter with my giving a dance?" I asked.

"Oh, will you?" cried Lucy, the sullen look vanishing beneath a radiant flash of child-like joy and enthusiasm. "Where will you give it? At Wilcox's?"

"Anywhere you say."

Fulton tossed his hands in a merry gesture of despair.

"Now you're stung!" he said, and then to Lucy, with a swift change of voice and manner: "I was only joking, you know that. If you want to give a dance, give it."

It was as if a child had cried to be taken up, and in the face of all the tenets of modern training, had been taken up. And you knew that with the lightest heart in the world Mrs. Fulton was going to spend money, which her husband could ill afford.

Shortly after dinner a loud yelling arose in the nursery, and the Fultons hurried off to investigate and give comfort, leaving the manipulation of a fearful and wonderful glass coffee machine to Evelyn Gray and me.

"Lucy," said Evelyn, "has as much idea of money as an alcohol lamp has. She ought to be well shaken. I don't believe John has been able to lay by a cent for a rainy day."

"But think what a run she gives him for his money. He's the original happy married man. Think how she works to make him comfortable, and how she mothers the babies, and how she hangs on his words, as if nobody else was present. Just now, most people would have sent a servant to find out which baby was making a disturbance, and why—but those two simply bolted for the nursery as if controlled by one brain and one set of muscles."

"Almost makes a bachelor wish he wasn't a bachelor!"

"Just the same I think they are a model of what married people ought to be. Since I got to know them pretty well, I've entirely changed my notions of the institution."

"I always thought it was a bully good institution,"' said Evelyn. Through two glass tubes water, raised almost to the boiling point by an alcohol flame, began to mount from one retort into another containing pulverized coffee.

"But," she went on with an affectation of melancholy, "I've never found the right man, or he's never found me."

"Have you looked," I asked, "diligently and with patience?"

She lifted her fine sea-blue eyes to mine. "Not so diligently, I hope, as to be conspicuous," she said. "But no girl fails to examine the possibility of every man she meets—married or single—and the girl you think the most matter-of-fact is the one who most often slips out of bed, sits by her window, and looks at the moon."

"Do you want to get married?"

"There, you're not merely surprised, you're shocked at the idea. Of course I do. Look now the coffee's running down into the bottom thing. What do we do next?"

"It's too pale," I said. "Put the lamp back and send it through again. And pray that it don't explode. But listen—for the sake of argument—I want to get married, too."

"You! A nice husband you'd make!"

"That's what I wanted to know. So even I have had my matrimonial possibilities examined into by matter-of-fact ladies, who sit at windows in their nightgowns, and look at the moon! I didn't like to ask more directly. Now tell me what's wrong with me?"

Her eyebrows rose mirthfully. "Are we playing truths, or shall I let you down easily?"

"I want the truth."

"Well, if your father lost his money, or disinherited you, you couldn't support a wife."

"Decision deferred," I said.

"You would begin married life with the highest and most generous resolutions; your subsequent fall would be all the harder for your wife to bear. You have a certain something about you that few really good men have, that attracts women. How long could you let that power rest without experimenting to see if you still had it? Not very long. You are the kind of man whose wife doesn't dare to have a good-looking maid."

"There," I said somewhat nettled, "you do me an injustice."

"You are a faithful friend," she said, "but you wouldn't be a faithful lover. Change and excitement and risk are bread and meat to you."

"Look here," I said, laughing, "you've not only considered me, you've considered me more than once, and seriously!"

"You have always," she said, "charmed me far more than was good for me."

I answered her mocking look with one as mocking.

"I should like," I said, "nothing better than to disprove all the things you think about me."

"You never will."

"Do you know what I think about myself? I think that I shall astonish the world with one of those grand passions which make history worth reading. The girl who gets me will be very lucky!"

"If you ever do have a grand passion," said Evelyn thoughtfully, "and it's just barely possible, it won't be for a girl. It won't be the kind that brings any good to anybody."

As they appeared in the door of the living-room, Fulton's hand dropped from his wife's waist. She was very rosy and lovely. They looked as if they had loitered on their way back from the nursery.

"Mrs. Fulton," I said, "I don't like your coffee-machine because I think it's going to explode, and we don't know how to get the coffee out. And I don't like your friend. She has exploded and scalded me cruelly."

"Oh," said Lucy, with the look of a knowing child, "I know, you've been playing truths, and Evelyn's got a New England conscience."

"If she wasn't so good-looking," I said, "I don't believe people would have her around, after a few experiences."

"You must try not to let her get on your nerves," said Fulton, "for I'm counting on you to keep an eye on this household while I'm away, and to see that those who inhabit it behave themselves."

"I don't want any more talk about going away," said Mrs. Fulton; "the fact is bad enough. I'm not a bit ashamed to have people know that I'll be miserable and cross all the time you are gone."

But she wasn't.

I saw her the next day just after his train had pulled out. She had taken Jock and Hurry to see him off. And all three, I was told by an eye-witness, had wept openly and without shame. My informant, Mrs. Deering, said that she had been reminded of Louis XVI leaving his family for the scaffold. But when I saw them five minutes later (you could still hear the far-off coughing of the northbound train) only Hurry looked grave, while Jock and his mother were illustrating to perfection the old adage, "Out of sight out of mind."

They did not look like a mother and her children, but like a big sister with her very littlest brother and sister. Hurry, sitting in the middle, was being allowed to hold the reins and the whip. She was in her usual hurry, and you could see at a glance that over any actual use of the whip friction was constantly arising. Under the runabout could be seen the thin dangling legs of Cornelius Twombly. I waved and shouted. Mrs. Fulton and Jock waved and shouted back, and Hurry seized the opportunity to strike cunningly with the whip. The horse lurched sharply forward, the three handsome bare heads jerked sharply back, and upon two wheels, in dust and laughter, they rounded the nearest corner and vanished.

I was going nowhere in particular, and so I turned my pony and trotted after them. If they came to grief, I thought, I owed it to Fulton to be on hand to pick up the pieces. But I didn't really expect to be useful. I caught them just as they pulled up in front of their house, and within a minute Hurry had commandeered me to ride her round the block, so I took her up in front, and we had a fine ride; then Jock, looking wistful, had to have his turn, and after that I was ordered to leave my pony and come see the new sand pile and the new puppy. Mrs. Fulton had gone into the house and left me to my fate, so I gave a hand to Jock and a hand to Hurry, and they dragged me to their own particular playground, and made me build King Solomon's palace in the "Butterfly that Stamped," and plant a whole palace garden with sprigs of box and Carolina cherry. And I built and planted with all my might, and it was a lot of fun, until suddenly Hurry crawled into my lap, and laid her head against me and went to sleep.

"You mustn't mind her," said Jock, "she's only a little baby."

I didn't mind her a bit; but somehow she had taken all the fun out of me, and made me feel more serious and tender than I liked. I made her as comfortable as I could, and presently my own crossed legs began to go to sleep; the new puppy made a hunter-like dash into the nearest shrubbery, Jock caught up his bow and arrow and followed, the children's nurse scuttled off toward the kitchen wing for a cup of tea, and I was generally abandoned to my fate.

Once or twice Hurry twitched sharply as all young animals do in sleep; and once she shook her head quite sharply as if a dream had required something of her and been denied. Then she turned her face upward so that it was in the full glare of the sun and because I had no hat I shielded it with my hand.

Then very quietly came Lucy Fulton and stood looking down at us, and I looked up at her, and in that exchange of glances was promoted from an acquaintance to an old and intimate friend of the family. Thereafter we did not have to make new beginnings of conversations, but could if we chose resume where we had left off.

Hurry waked as suddenly as she had gone to sleep, and Lucy made her thank me for taking such good care of her. But when it was time for me to get up out of the hot sand, I couldn't at first because of the soundly sleeping legs, and when I managed it, it was for Hurry's benefit, with a great, and I hope, humorous exaggeration of the pains and difficulties.

I don't know why I drank so many cocktails that night before dinner, nor so much champagne at dinner, nor so many whiskies afterward. I had neither made a heavy killing at the races, nor met with disaster. If the day differed from other days it was only in this, that I had received the confidence of a little child and her mother; that this confidence had touched my heart very nearly, and given me the wish to be of use to those two, and if necessary to sacrifice my selfish self for them. Feeling then that I was a better man than I had thought myself, elated with that thought, and almost upon the brink of good resolutions, I cut into a rubber of bridge, and began to drink cocktails. Why, I shall never know. Let those who drink explain and understand, each to himself, and let those who don't drink despise and condemn, publicly, as is usual with them.

VI

I was feeling very sentimental by the time I got to bed. I had had a long, and I suppose maudlin, talk with Harry Colemain on the beauties of matrimony. We had maintained the Fultons against all comers, as our ideal example of that institution.

"Just think," I said, "this very night is the first one that John has been away from her since they were married. That's going some. That's some record. He boarded the train like a man mounting the scaffold to have his head chopped off."

I almost cried over the touching picture which I felt I had drawn.

"There aren't many couples like them," Harry agreed wistfully. "But I bet even you and I had it in us to be decent and faithful if we'd ever struck the right girl. Those things are the purest luck, and we've been unlucky. But it makes me sick to be as old as we are, and no nearer home than the day we left college."

"When that baby was asleep in my lap—did I tell you about that?"

"Twice," said Harry mournfully.

I didn't believe him, and related the episode again. "It was wonderful," I said; "she was like a little stove with a fire in it. She made me feel so trusted and tender that I could have put back my head and bawled like a wolf. Think of having babies like that for your very own, and a wife like Lucy Fulton thrown in."

"She could have married most anybody," said Harry, "but she took a poor man and a rank outsider because she—hic—loved him. That's the kind of girl she is! Why nobody ever thought she'd settle to anybody. I bet she broke her word to half a dozen men, before she gave it to Fulton and kept it."

"I wouldn't call him exactly an outsider," I said; "anyway she's made an insider of him. Everybody likes him, and admires him. I never thought much of him at school, but I think he's a peach now. And he understands everything you say to him."

"He understands a good deal more than we'll ever be able to say to him. He's got brains. Evelyn Gray is staying with them."

"I know she is. I dined there last night. She's looking very pretty."

"She is pretty," said Harry, "and she's got pretty hands and feet; most pretty women haven't. It's usually the woman with a face that would stop a clock that has pretty feet."

"Like Mrs. Deering," I suggested.

"Exactly," he said. "But Deering is no fool."

"How do you mean he isn't a fool?"

"Why," said Harry, "he makes her sleep with her feet on the pillow."

This struck me as very funny, and I laughed until I had forgotten what I was laughing at. Harry got laughing, too, after a while. He put his whole soul in it. Then we ordered two bottles of ale and had some fat wood put on the fire, and watched it roar and sputter with flame as only fat wood can. After much meditation and a swallow of the fresh-brought ale, my mind began to harp on Evelyn Gray, and to magnify her good looks and attractions. So I said:

"Harry, why don't you marry Evelyn?"

For a moment he scowled at the fire. Then he spoke in a bitter voice.

"Suppose I wanted to, and she wanted to," he said, "still we couldn't."

"Why not?" I asked innocently, expecting, I think, that his phrase was some sort of a conundrum.

"Why, Archie, my boy," he said, and his scowl faded to a look of weariness and disgust, "it looks as if I might have to marry somebody else."

"Not——?"

He nodded. And presently he said, "It will be best for her—of course."

"But I haven't heard even a rumor. Has he started anything?"

"No. He's a decentish little chap. He's trying to make up his mind whether to divorce her or be divorced himself. It hinges on the children. If he divorces her he'll get them, and if he lets himself be divorced, she will."

"It's big trouble, Harry!"

"Yes. For we are sick and tired of each other. I'd rather like to blow my head off."

"But if she divorces him, you needn't marry her."

He rose slowly to his full height and held out his hand. "I'm going to turn in," he said. "Good night."

"Good night, Harry. I'm sorry for you, you know that."

"I only have my deserts," he said. "Sensible men, like you, steer clear of family complications."

When he had gone I had another bottle of ale in front of the fire, and from thinking of Harry, I got to thinking of how well ale seemed to go on top of whiskey, and to congratulating myself on my strong head and stomach. "Nobody," I thought complacently, "would suspect that I had been drinking." Then I got to thinking once more about Evelyn Gray. It was time I settled down, why not with Evelyn—if only to prove to her that the truths she had told me about myself weren't true? I began to fancy that I had in me all the qualities that go to make the ideal husband, and that in Evelyn were to be found all the qualities which make the ideal wife. I could have wept to think what a good sportsman she was, and how Pilgrim-father honest.

On her writing-desk my mother has three little monkeys carved in ivory. One has his hands clapped to his ears, one to his eyes, and the other to his mouth. Their names are "Hear no Evil," "See no Evil," and "Speak no Evil."

I have to pass her door to get to my room. But late at night that door is never left ajar. She is not the kind of mother who puts in a sudden (and wholly accidental!) appearance when her son is coming home a little the worse for wear. She has never seen me the worse for wear (and I'm not very often), and if she has her way (and I have mine) she never will.

"What in thunderation started you last night?" said my father at breakfast.

"I'm hanged if I know," I said; "but what makes you think I got started?"

"I'd just put out the lights in the library when you came in. You stopped in front of the hall mirror, and said:

"Beautiful Evelyn Gray is dead
Come and sit by her side an hour."

"I didn't," I exclaimed indignantly.

My father began to chuckle all over like Santa Claus in the Christmas poem.

"You mean beautiful Evelyn Hope, don't you?" I asked.

"Gray was the name."

"I'd like to know what you were doing up so late?"

"Oh, we had a big night—three tables of bridge and one of poker. I sat up late to count my winnings."

"How much did you drop, as a matter of fact?"

"Only about eighty."

"Any twinges this morning?"

"No, sir. And a better appetite than you've got."

"I doubt that."

And, indeed, we both ate very hearty breakfasts.

VII

If I thought that Lucy would be melancholy during her husband's absence I was mistaken. It was almost as if she had no husband. She was like some radiant schoolgirl home for the holidays. But I am pretty sure that Fulton missed her during every waking moment. He wrote to her at least twice a day and sent her many telegrams.

"He knows what a shocking memory I have," she explained; "and he's afraid that I'll forget him unless constantly reminded. Wouldn't it be funny if people only existed for us when they were actually present? Some time I think I'm a little like that about people. Until I really fell in love, I always loved the boy that was on the spot."

"I've heard that you were an outrageous flirt."

"I didn't know my own mind. That isn't flirting. And when a boy said he liked me, I was so pleased and flattered that I always said I liked him, too, and the minute he was out of sight, I'd find that I didn't."

A few days of hot sunshine had worked wonders with the jasmine. Here and there the bright golden trumpets were so massed as to give an effect of bonfires; here and there a vine carried beauty and sweetness to the top of a tall tree, or festooning among the branches resembled a string of lights. The humming of bees was steady and insistent like the roar of far-off surf. And so strong was the mounting of the sap that already the twigs and branches of deciduous trees appeared as through a mist of green. The buds on the laurel, swollen and pink, looked like sugar decorations for wedding cakes. Flashes of brightest blue and scarlet told of birds recently arrived from still farther south. Lucy Fulton had just received a telegram from her husband, saying that in New York a blizzard was raging.

She was in one of her talkative moods. Her voice, clear and boyish and far-carrying, was so easy and pleasant to listen to that it didn't matter much what she said. Should I convey an erroneous impression and one derogatory to a charming companion if I said that she chattered along like a magpie? She talked about servants, and I gathered that she had never had any trouble with servants. And I thought, "Why should you, you who are so friendly, so frank, and so kind?" She gave me both sides of the argument about bare legs for children versus stockinged legs. She confessed to an immense passion for so lowly a dish as stewed prunes, she memorialized upon dogs and horses that had belonged to her. I learned that her favorite story was the "Brushwood Boy," that her favorite poem was "The Last Ride Together," and that her favorite flower was Olea fragrans, the tea-olive (she really said its Latin name), whose waxy-white blossom is no bigger than the head of a pin, and whose fragrance is as that of a whole basketful of hot-house peaches.

Had I really and truly liked the teagown she wore the other night? Would I cross my heart to that effect? Well, then, she had made it all herself in a day. If the worse came to the worst, if cartridges fell upon still more evil days, she would turn dressmaker, and become rich and famous. Wasn't it a pity that John had to work so hard, and miss so many lovely days?

"I think he'd be quite rich," she said, "if it wasn't for me. I was brought up to spend all the money I wanted to, and I don't seem able to stop. I know it isn't fair to John, and John says it isn't fair to the babies, and I make beautiful resolutions and forget all about them."

"But now that your husband has had to cut his salary in half, you'll simply have to be good, won't you?"

She admitted that now she would simply have to be good. And a moment later she was making plans for the dance that she was going to give at Wilcox's.

"Why wouldn't it be a fine beginning of economy to cut that dance out?" I asked. "Why not let me give it? I'm quite flush just now. It wouldn't hurt me a bit."

"I thrashed it all out with John," she said, "that same night after you'd gone. He told me to go ahead, and not disappoint myself. I didn't see why you shouldn't give a dance for me if you wanted to, and I wanted you to. But John wouldn't listen to that for a minute. I must say I couldn't see why, and I don't yet. It isn't like paying my dressmaker's bill, or giving me a pearl necklace. I said that. And he said no, it wasn't like that, but that it was a second cousin twice removed."

"I think he'd be mightily pleased if he came back and found that the price of this dance was still to his credit in that firm and excellent institution, the Bank of Western Carolina."

"If we are really hard up," she said, "what does a few hundred dollars matter one way or the other?"

It seemed to me that I had done all that I could to save Fulton's money for him. I had the feeling that if I continued to preach economy I might get myself disliked, for already Lucy seemed to have lost something of her light-heartedness and vivacity.

"When do you give it?" I said. "Please ask me."

"I shall give it day after tomorrow night," she said; "and I shall ask everybody in Aiken."

I said that she insulted me, and then we laughed like two silly children, and light-heartedness and vivacity returned to her like two bright birds to a flowering bush. We planned the dance in full detail. There was just time to get a famous quartette down from Washington. She would have the rooms decorated with wagon-loads of jasmine. Once I had seen the expression of Hurry's face upon learning that there was to be chocolate ice cream for dessert. In planning her dance Lucy's face had just the same expression. When she was excited with happiness it seemed to me that she had the loveliest face I had ever seen.

We rode until dusk, but I could not accept her invitation for tea or a drink, because my mother was expecting some people over from Augusta and I had promised to come home. The people's motor, however, had broken down, and I found my mother all alone, presiding at a tea table that almost groaned with good things to eat.

"What have you been doing?" she asked.

"I've been riding—as you see. I've been riding with Mrs. Fulton."

"Again? It seems to me you ride with her every day. You must find her fascinating, or you wouldn't do it."

"You read me like a book, mother. I certainly wouldn't. But don't you think fascinating is rather a strong word? She's the most easy-going and engaging little person in the world, but fascinating …? Fascination suggests the effect of paint and fixed smiles and lights and spangles upon old men with bald heads, the effect of the wily serpent upon the guileless bird."

"Aiken," said my mother, "is such a very small place."

"It isn't like you to beat about the bush. Why not say frankly that if I keep on I'll end by making Lucy Fulton conspicuous?"

"Very well," smiled my mother (very gently), "that's just what I do say."

"Aiken," I said, "can go hang. If two people like to ride together, for no worse reason than that they like riding and are good friends, what earthly business is it of Aiken's? People make me sick. That's a bromide, but it's a good one. As for Lucy Fulton, I really like her a lot, and she really amuses me, but if I knew that I was never to see her again in this world, I'd lose no sleep over it. Why, they are the original happy married pair. Just think he's away from home for the first time since they were married. They make love to each other openly, right under your very nose, so that it's downright embarrassing. Latterly I've had a meal ticket at their house, and seeing them together with their babies, and noting all the peace and trustfulness and lovingness of it, has opened my eyes (that were so firmly shut) to the possibilities and beauties of matrimony."

"At any rate," said my mother, "you haven't talked yourself entirely out."

"Well, you see, I was a listener today. Part of the time I was lectured on the empty life I lead, and then I was almost persuaded that I ought to fall in love with Evelyn Gray, and she with me. I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Fulton bullied us into it before she got through."

"It would be a delightful marriage," said my mother with enthusiasm, "for everybody."

"With the possible exception of Evelyn and me."

Just after this Evelyn, who was great friends with my mother, came in without being announced, and said that she was famished, and that she put herself entirely in our hands. So we fed her tea, toast, hot biscuits, three kinds of sandwiches, and as many kinds of cakes. And she finished off with a tumbler full of thick cream.

"Been sitting by your window lately," I asked, "looking at the moon?"

"He thinks," Evelyn complained to my mother, "that delicate sentiments and a hearty appetite don't go together. But we know better, don't we?"

"When I'm in love," I said, "I eat like a canary bird. I just waste away. Don't I, mother?"

"Fall in love with somebody," said my mother, "and I'll tell you."

"Nobody encourages me," I said; "my life has been one long rebuff, I remind myself of a dog with muddy paws; whenever I start to jump up I get a whack on the nose."

"Your sad lot," said Evelyn, "is almost the only topic of conversation among sympathetic people. But of course, if you will have muddy paws——!"

"And yet, seriously," I said; "somewhere in this wide world there must be one girl in whose eyes I might succeed in passing myself off as a hero. I wish to heaven I had her address—a little cream?"

Evelyn scorned the hospitable suggestion and reached for her gloves and riding crop.

"I came to see you," she said to my mother, "really I did. And I've done nothing but eat. I'm coming again soon when there's nobody here but you, and the larder is low."

"Good Lord!" I said, when we had reached the front gate. "Where's your pony?"

"I sent him away," she said; "I'm walking. And you don't have to see me home."

"But if I want to? And anyway it's too late and dark for you to walk home alone. Once upon a time there was a girl and her name was Little Red Riding Hood, and once as she was walking home in the dark, after an unusually heavy tea, she met a wolf. And he said, 'Evening, Little Red Riding Hood,' and she, though she was twittering with fear, and in no condition for running because of the immensely heavy tea, said, 'Evening, Mr. Wolf.'"

"Come along then!" said Evelyn. "Already you have persuaded me that Little Red Riding Hood is a pig, and that she is in great danger."

But we didn't walk to the Fultons', we strolled. And the deep dusk turned to a velvety black night, soft and warm as a garment, and all spangled over with stars. It was one of the Aiken nights that smells of red cedar. We passed more than one pair of soft-voiced darkies who appeared to lean against each other as they strolled, and from whom came sounds like the cooing of doves. Once far off we heard shouting and a pistol shot, and presently one came running and crossed our path far ahead, but whether a white man or a black we could not tell.

The lights in the Fultons' yard had not yet been switched on. In a recess cut from the foliage of a cedar tree, a white garden seat glimmered in the starlight.

"It's too early to dress for dinner," I said, "and it's a pity to go indoors."

Without a word Evelyn turned into the fragrant recess. The sudden acquiescence of one usually so disputatious, where I was concerned, troubled me a little, because I could not explain it to my satisfaction. It never had happened before. I could not see her face clearly enough to gather its expression, and so I put a cigarette in my mouth and struck a match. It missed fire, and Evelyn said, "Please don't. Unless you want to very much."

"I don't want to at all," I said; "it was just habit. Cedar smells better than tobacco, and that's saying a good deal."

She did not answer and a few moments later I said:

"Any other couple, I suppose, seated on this bench in these surroundings would make a noise like the cooing of doves. But either you or I don't say anything, like tonight walking home, or we fight. And yet I think that if the whole truth were told we like each other quite a good deal. I admit that you often say hard things about me to my face, but I deny that you say them behind my back. Behind my back I have heard that you sometimes make valiant and comradely efforts to—well to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, so to speak."

"I've always remembered," she said, very gently, "and never forgotten how nice you were to me at my coming-out party, when I was so scared and young and all. I thought you were the most wonderful man in the world, and had the most understanding and the most tact."

She laughed softly, but not mirthfully.

"That night," she said; "if you'd asked me to run away with you I'd have done it like a shot."

"But tonight," I said, "if I so much as touched your hand, you'd turn into an icicle, and send me about my business with a few disagreeable truths to wear in my bonnet. And I think I know the reason. It's because on that first night, even if I had been desperately in love with you, I wouldn't have thought of asking you to run away with me, whereas now I can conceive of making such a proposition to somebody that I didn't even love two bits' worth—for no better reason than that she was lovely to look at and that the night smelled of cedar."

"I've only been out seven years," said Evelyn; "seven years tonight."

"Many happy returns, Evelyn. I had no idea this was an anniversary."

"It doesn't seem possible," she went on, "for a man to change his whole moral nature in seven years, and to boast about that change."

"I haven't changed and I didn't boast. If I ever knew what was right and what was wrong, I still know. The only difference is that I used to think it mattered a lot, and now I'm not so sure. I see good people suffer, and wicked people triumph; and I don't think that everything is for the best in this best of worlds; I think most things are decidedly for the worst. Why should so many people be poor and sick and uncomfortable? Why should so many men marry the wrong girls, so many girls the wrong men? If we are suffering for our sins, well and good, but what was the use of making us so pesky sinful! You won't, of course, but most people come back at one with one's inability to comprehend—they always say 'comprehend' the Great Design. As if they themselves comprehended said Great Design to perfection. If there is a Great Design, no human being understands a jot of it; that's certain. Why be so sure then that something we don't understand, and which may not even exist, is absolutely right and beautiful? Suppose it could be proved to us that there was no Great Design, and no Great Designer, that the world was the result of some blind, happy-go-lucky creative force, what would we think of the world then, poor thing? A poor woman with nothing to live for walks the streets that she may live; a rich woman with much to live for dies slowly and in great torture, of cancer. If we accept the Great Design we shouldn't even feel pity for these two women, we should say of them merely, 'How right! How beautiful!' But we do feel pity for them, and by that mere feeling of pity deny automatically the beauty of the Great Design, in the first place, and its subsequent execution. I can conceive, I think, of a lovely picture: you for instance, on a white bench, under a cedar in the starlight, listening to my delightful conversation, but I couldn't possibly draw the picture, let alone paint it. The Great Design, it seems to me, had a tremendous gift for landscape, but fell down a little when it came to people."

"Archie," said Evelyn, "you talk like an irreverent schoolboy."

"Of course I do," I said; "I must. I can't help myself. I am only playing my part in the Great Design. But if you believe in that then it is irreverent of you to say that my talk is anything but absolutely right, just, and beautiful. So there!"

She said nothing. And after a few moments of silence I began to feel sorry that I had talked flippantly.

"Evelyn," I said, "you mustn't mind poor old me."

Almost unconscious of what I was doing I lifted her right hand from her lap, and held it in both mine. She made one feeble little effort to tug her hand away and then no more. In the heavens, a star slipped, and from the heavens fell, leaving a wake of golden glory. And it seemed after that sudden blazing as if the night was blacker than before.

I slid my left arm around her shoulders, and, unresisted, drew her a little toward me, until I could feel her heart beating strongly against mine.

Just then the latch of the house door turned with a strong oil click, the door swung open, and dark against the light illumination of the hall stood Lucy Fulton. As she stood looking and listening, the strong bell of the far-off courthouse clock began to strike. Long before the lights and last clanging concussion, Evelyn and I had withdrawn to the uttermost ends of our bench.

Then Lucy turned and went back into the house and shut the door after her.

Evelyn had risen.

"Good night," she said, but she did not hold out her hand.

"Good night," I said; "I've made you late. I'm sorry."

She started to speak, hesitated, and then said, very quietly, "Why did you make love to me just now?"

It seemed to me that the least I could do was to answer "Because I love you." But the words must have choked me, and with shame, I told her the truth.

"I made love to you," I said, "because I have only one life to live."

"I thought so," she said, still very quietly, and turned toward the house. But I had caught up with her in a mere crumb of time.

"I have been honest with you, Evelyn," I said; "will you be honest with me? I have told you why I made love to you. I want to know; it seems to me that I ought to know. Why did you let me?"

"Oh," she said, "I shut my eyes and pretended that we were in the conservatory, seven years ago tonight."

"Pretended?"

"Yes, Archie, honestly."

Halfway up the steps of the house she turned, and said a little wearily, "How many lives do you think I have to live?"

"May it be long and happy."

On that we parted, and I heard the ghost of a cynical laugh as she let herself into the house.

And I hurried home, inexcusably late for dinner, and filled with shame and remorse. And ever at the back of my head was the image, not of Evelyn Gray, vague and illusive in the starlight, but of that other image that had stood forth dark and sharply defined against the light of the hall.

"Lucy Fulton," I said to myself, "you came in the nick of time. And you are my good angel."