With the knowledge that I loved Lucy and that she loved me, came also
the knowledge that for a long time the situation had been
inevitable--inevitable if we kept on being so much in each other's
company. Passages between us of words and looks now recurred to my
memory filled with portentous meaning. Oh, I thought, how could I have
been so blind! A fool must have seen it coming. I ought to have seen
it coming. I ought to have run from it as a man runs from a
conflagration. When Lucy told me that she no longer loved her husband
I ought to have known that the fault was mine, and I ought to have gone
to a far place, and left that little family to rehabilitate itself in
peace. Surely after a "blank" spell Lucy would have loved her husband
again.
But all the thoughts that I carried to bed with me that night were not
dark with remorse. It was possible for whole minutes of time,
especially between sleeping and waking, to forget the complications of
the situation and to bask in the blissful warmth of its serenities.
The laughter, the prayers, the adoration of Lucy's lovely eyes were
mine now. She loved me better than her children, better than life
itself. She had not said these things to me, she had looked them to
me. It was wonderful to feel that I had been trusted with so much that
was beautiful and precious.
Once a spoiled child, always a spoiled child. In the scheme of things
I _would_ not at first give their proper place to those awful barriers
which society has set up between a man and another man's wife. We
loved each other with might and main, and our only happiness could be
in passing over those barriers and belonging to each other. John
Fulton and his children were but vague pale shadows across the sunshine.
The sleep that I got that night, short though it was, was infinitely
refreshing. I waked with the feeling that happiness had at last come
into my life, and that I was not thirty-five years old, but twenty
years young.
I walked in my mother's garden waiting for servants to come downstairs
and make coffee for me and poach eggs. It was going to be a lovely
day. Already the sun had coaxed the tea-olives to give out their odor
of ripe peaches. "How she loves them," I thought. "If only she were
with me now."
The garden seemed very beautiful to me. For the first time in my life,
I think, I took a flower in my hands and examined it to see how it was
made. A great and new curiosity filled me. How beautiful the world
was, and all things in it; how short the time to find out all that
there was to be known about all those beautiful things! And what an
ignoble basis of ignorance I must start from if I was to "find out,"
and to "understand!" There filled me a sense of unworthiness and a
strong desire for self-improvement.
"I must learn the names of some of these things," I thought, and I
began to read the labels which stood among the flowers and shrubbery,
for in such matters my mother was very strict and particular: _Abeleia
grandiflora, Laurestinus, Olea fragrans, Ligustrum napalense, Rosa
watsoniana_---- Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more
like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer.
Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle
of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions
of buds no bigger than the eggs in a shad roe. Yes, it was a rose. I
looked at the drop of blood on the ball of my thumb, and thought what a
beautiful color it was, and how gladly, if need be, I would shed every
drop of it for Her.
Dark smoke began to pour from the kitchen chimney, and I knew that the
cook was down. Hilda must have seen me in the garden, for she was
setting a place for me at one end of the big dining-table. How fresh
and clean she always looked and how tidy. Almost you might have
thought that her hair was carved from some rich brown substance. It
was always as neat as the hair of a statue.
"Good morning, Hilda."
"Good morning, Mr. Archie."
"How about breakfast?"
"It will be ready directly."
"Wish you'd give me a long glass of Apollinaris with a lot of ice in
it."
"With pleasure."
I heard her pounding ice in the pantry and then the pop as the bottle
came open. She stood behind my chair while I drank. And somehow I got
the feeling that she was smiling. I turned my head quickly. She was
smiling, but tremulously, almost as if she was going to cry.
"What's the matter, Hilda--have I forgotten to brush the back of my
hair?"
"No, sir--it's----"
"It's _what_?"
"Nothing, sir--only----"
"Don't be silly---- Tell me."
She told me, and for a moment, so odd was her statement, I thought she
must have gone out of her mind.
"The window of my room," she said, "is just over one of the windows of
yours."
I didn't know what to say. I really thought she must be slightly
deranged. I said lamely: "Which window?"
"The one by your bed, the one you always leave open so's the air can
get to you."
"Well, Hilda, what about it?"
"Sometimes I hear you talking in your sleep, and then I lean out of my
window and listen."
With this admission she blushed crimson and no longer looked me in the
eyes.
"Do you think that's quite fair?"
"I don't lead a very full life, Mr. Archie."
"And my unconscious prattle helps to fill it? Do I often talk in my
sleep?"
"You talked last night."
Her voice was full of meaning and somehow I felt chilled and no longer
so very gay and happy.
"What did I talk about?"
"About a lady."
With humiliation I realized that I was now turning red; but I laughed,
and said: "We look like a couple of boiled lobsters, Hilda. What did I
say about the lady?"
"You said--I only thought you ought to know that I know--so's--well
so's you can keep that window shut, and fix it so no one else will
know."