"No pressure of opposition?"
"Caring is supposed to thrive on opposition, isn't it?" said I.
"In short," said John, "if I refuse to be divorced you care enough to
run away together into social ostracism?"
Lucy smiled at me and I smiled back at her. And at that Fulton's
calmness left him for a moment.
"My God," he cried, "I am up against it."
But almost instantly he had himself once more in hand, and was speaking
again in level, almost cheerful tones.
"Social ostracism," he said, "would be very horrid if you stopped
caring for each other."
"Why take it for granted that we'd stop caring?"
"I don't. I'm taking nothing for granted. But no girl, Archie, ever
cared for a man more than Lucy cared for me--and then she stopped
caring. I know less about your stamina. But this is not the first
time you've cared."
"It's the first time I've _really_ cared," I said.
"It's not the first time you've _said_ that you really cared, is it?"
I was unable to answer, and his eyes twinkled with a kind of automatic
amusement. Then once more grave, "I never even _thought_," he said,
"that I ever cared about anyone but Lucy. That gives me a peculiar
advantage in passing judgment on matters of caring--an advantage
enjoyed neither by you nor Lucy. I wasn't any more her first flame
than she is yours. But she was my first and only flame. I can speak
with a troop of faithful years at my back. But you and she have only
been faithful to each other for a matter of days. I am not doubting
the intensity of your inclination, but I can't help asking, Will it
last? Are you prepared to swear that you will love her and no other
all your days?"
"Yes," I said firmly. And I loved her so much at that moment that I
felt purified in so saying and believing.
"How about you, Lucy'? Never mind, don't answer. You are thinking of
that day when you stood up before all our friends and swore that you
would love me all your days. Naturally it would embarrass you to
repeat that with respect to another, before my face. So I won't ask
you to . . ."
"John," said Lucy, "all this is so obvious. And it leads nowhere.
Talk won't change us. So won't you please say what you are going to
do?"
"Not until I know myself," he said. "But there is one thing . . . I
think it would be better all round if you saw less of each other until
something is decided. I realize that Jock and Hurry and I are very
much in the way. Jock and Hurry naturally don't care how much you two
are together. But I do. It isn't that I don't trust you out of my
sight. You know that. But the mind of a jealous man is a gallery hung
with intolerable pictures. Merely to think of Lucy, Archie, giving you
the same look that she used to have for me is to burn in hell-fire."
He turned on his heel, and left us abruptly. We could hear him calling
to the nurse to ask how Hurry was feeling, and we could hear his steps
going up the stair to the nursery.
"He's going to do the right thing, Lucy," I said.
"I wish he wouldn't talk and talk. The milk's spilled. I suppose
we've _got_ to keep more or less apart."
"Yes, Lucy."
I held out my arms, and for a moment we made, I suppose, one of those
intolerable pictures that hung in Fulton's mental gallery. And then I
went away.
It was good to have told. I was very deeply in love; I thought that
Lucy's and my future could soon be smoothed into shape, but I did not
feel happy. I felt as if I had been through a great ordeal of some
sort, and had come off second best. It seemed to me that I ought to
have stood up more loudly for my love, for its intensity and power to
endure.
In addition there had been about John Fulton an ominous quiet. I could
better have endured a violent outbreak. For there is no action without
its reaction. After a storm there is calm. But Fulton's calm was more
like that which precedes a storm.
His breakdown came after I had left. Lucy told me about it. He had
come back to her in the living-room, and said things about me that she
would never never forgive.
"I don't care what he says about me," she cried, "but if he talks to me
against you, I won't stand it."
"It's natural for him to feel bitter against me. I'm sorry, of course.
But it doesn't matter."
"If he's got to feel bitter, let him feel bitter against me. If anyone
is to blame, I am to blame."
"What did he say about me?" I asked.
"He said you were the kind of man that men didn't count when they were
counting up the number of men they knew. He said you had always been
too idle to keep out of mischief. And that no pretty woman would be
safe from you--if you weren't afraid . . . Afraid!"
"That's quite an indictment."
"I said: 'Why didn't you say all that to his face, when he was here,
instead of waiting till you could say it behind his back . . .'"
Here she turned to me with the most wonderful look of tenderness and
trust.
"But I know what I know. And you are the kindest and the truest and
the gentlest man . . ."
"Oh, I'm not! I'm not, Lucy! . . . But what does that matter, if I
never let you find out the difference? . . . We mustn't take what John
says too seriously. He's had enough trouble to warp his mind."
She still looked up into my face with that wonderful trust and
tenderness. "And you are the most generous man to another man!" she
said.