IV

In those Groton days I let matches strictly alone; I neither played

with them, nor used them to light cigarettes with. I was vaguely

ambitious to be great and splendid, and I was down on purposeless boys

who didn't behave themselves.

Lucy's brother was in my form. She used to come to visit him, with her

parents, in their car. Even for Groton parents the Ludlows were

enormously rich, or if they weren't enormously rich, they were enormous

spenders.

Lucy was seven years our junior, but even in those baby days she had

the laughing mouth and the praying eyes that were to play such havoc

later on. She was a child of the world; natural, straightforward, and

easy-going.

Lucy at nine was so pretty, so engaging, and had so much charm and

magnetism that I remember having regretted, very solemnly, and with

youthful finality, that we did not belong to the same generation. I

was sorry that she was not fifteen or sixteen like myself; so that I

could be in love with her and she with me!

Once Lucy was so sick that they thought she was going to die, and

Schuyler was called home from school. The whole school was affected,

so strong and vivid was its memory of an engaging and fearless child.

I remember being sorrier than ever that I had been confirmed into a

system which makes disease contagious instead of health, and asking one

of the masters how he reconciled the death of a kid like that, whom

everybody loved, with his conception of an all-wise and all-merciful

God. He answered, it has always seemed to me very lamely, that if we

didn't believe that all was for the best, in this best of all worlds,

we should never get anywhere.

All for the best! If we are to forgive the Power that sets him on, why

not the murderer himself who does the real dirty work? If _all_ is for

the best, so then must the component parts of all (each and every) be

for the best. In short we can do no wrong in this best of worlds. Oh,

what grim, weak-minded nonsense they prate and preach!

There was hand-clapping when the Rector told us that Schuyler Ludlow's

little sister was going to get well, and presently Schuyler returned to

school somewhat self-important, as becomes one who has sat at meat with

famous doctors, and talked of them _in extremis_.

The first rime I rode with Lucy through the Aiken woods, I recalled

this famous illness of hers, and I think it had something to do with

all that happened afterward.

We had lost ourselves, a little, as you do at Aiken, among the infinity

of sand trails beyond the Whitney drive. We knew where we were, of

course, and we knew where Aiken was, but every trail that started

toward it fetched up short with a wrong turning. It was one of those

bright hot days in late February, when a few jasmine flowers have

opened, and you are pretty sure that there won't be any more long

spells of rain or freezing cold. Even Lucy, who loved riding, was

content to sit a walking horse, and bask in the sunshine.

I mentioned her famous illness, and she remembered nothing about It.

"I'm always too busy," she said, "with what's going on right now to

remember things."

"Why," I said, "Schuyler was sent for, and you were given up half a

dozen times. Don't you really remember at all?"

"They wouldn't have told me I was being given up right and left, would

they? Probably it didn't hurt much, and I was given a great many

presents. It seems to me I do remember one particularly great time of

presents, when lots of old gentlemen came to see me."

"I hoped you'd remember better," I said; "because at the time it seemed

to me one of the most important things that had ever happened in the

world."

Lucy listened eagerly. She didn't in the least mind a conversation

that was all about herself.

"The whole school," I said, "was touched with solemnity. Now you

wouldn't take me for a praying man, would you?"

"I don't know. Wouldn't I?"

"Whether I am or not," I said, "doesn't matter now, because I have so

little to pray for. But at that time I went down on my knees and

prayed that you'd get well."

"You were very fond of Schuyler, weren't you?"

"And am. But that wasn't the reason. I don't know just what the

reason was. Maybe I was looking forward to this ride, and didn't want

to miss it! I was ashamed to be seen praying, so I prayed in bed. But

I was afraid that wouldn't do any good, so when my roommate had gone to

sleep I got up in the dark and went down on my marrowbones on the bare

icy floor, and I prayed like a good 'un."

Lucy's mouth laughed, but her eyes prayed.

"Then, maybe," she said, "if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be here

now."

"I'd like to think that," I said; "but there must have been lots of

others who prayed. I should like nothing better than a Carnegie hero

medal, with the attached pension, but the jury require proofs."

"It's funny," she said, "to think of you kneeling on the icy floor and

praying for me."

"For your _recovery_!" I corrected her.

"I think it would have been nicer if you had prayed for me. Didn't

you--even a little?"

"If I had realized that I could be seven years older than you and still

belong to the same generation, my prayers would have been altogether

different, and there would have been more of them."

"Where do you think _this_ road goes?"

She turned into it without waiting for an answer, and urged her pony

into a gentle amble.

I caught up with her and said: "I know this trail. It will take us

straight to the Whitney drive. Then we can go right up over the hill

and come out by Sand River."

"It's fun," she said, "to find somebody that likes riding. Everybody's

mad about golf. John rides whenever I ask him, but it's cruel to

separate him from the new mid-iron that Jimmie made for him. And he

won't let me ride alone."

Poor John Fulton showed little worldly wisdom in making that

prohibition.

"I'd rather ride than eat," I said. "Will you ride again tomorrow?"

She quoted the Aiken story of the lonely bachelor in the

boarding-house. He is called to the telephone, hears a hospitable

voice that says, "Will you come to lunch tomorrow at one-thirty?" and

answers promptly, "You _bet_ I will! . . . Who is it?"

Just before you reach the Whitney drive there is a right angle turn

from the trail which we were following; it back-tracks a little, errs

and strays through some fine jasmine "bowers," and comes out at the old

race track.

"It's early," I said; "let's go this way."

She wheeled her pony instantly.

"Do you always do what you're told?"

She bowed her head very humbly, and meekly, through a mischievous

mouth, said: "Yes, sir!" And added: "Except when awfully long."

"What do you mean by that?"

"That the most fun is beginning something, and then beginning something

else before you get all tired out and tangled up. Never say no until

you are sure that what's been proposed isn't any good. _Then_ back

out!"

"Don't you ever say no?"

"I 'spect I was very badly brought up. Nobody ever said no to me."

We wound up a hot hillside among tangled masses of jasmine, in which

here and there were set star-like golden flowers, whose gardenia-like

perfume mixed with the resinous aromatic smell of the long-needle

pines. I rode a little behind, on purpose, for I love to see a pretty

woman turn her head and look backward across her shoulder. She has no

pose more charming, unless it be when she stands before the "laughing

mirror" and lifts her hands to her hair.

"I have often wondered," I said, "how you happened to marry Fulton.

But now I understand. It was because you couldn't say no to anybody,

and yet he couldn't by any possible chance have been the first to ask.

What has become of the first poor fellow to whom you were unable to say

no? . . . And all the others?"

She looked back at me over her shoulder, her eyebrows lifted in an

effort of memory, which, with a mischievous laugh, she presently

abandoned.

"Why," she said, "as far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west

and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words

the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief

and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea,

that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was

really as happy and as carefree as she seemed to be, and not some loyal

martyr upon the altar of matrimony.

To look at, she was but a child in her teens, slender and virginal, and

yet I had it from Fulton himself that her babies had weighed nine

pounds apiece and that she had nursed them both. "She looks down," he

said, "with contempt, on bottle babies."

He was just coming in from golf, with the smug smile of one who has

played a good round, on his face. His buggy boy, Cornelius Twombly, a

black imp of twelve, who carried a razor in his hip pocket, wore also

the smug look of one who has caddied to victory, and won certain

nickels and dimes from another caddie upon the main and minor issues of

the match.

As Fulton climbed out of his rickety, clattering runabout, Mrs. Fulton

slipped from her smart pony, and they met with an honest kiss, like

lovers long parted, and at once each began to tell the other all about

everything.

[Illustration: "They met with an honest kiss, like lovers long parted."]

"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."