The very next day Evelyn told a few old friends that she was going to
be married to Dawson Cooper. At once Lucy felt that she must give a
dinner in the happy young people's honor, and to this dinner, as one of
Evelyn's oldest friends and of Dawson's for that matter, I had to be
asked.
In many ways, this dinner differed in my memory from other dinners. To
begin with, it was exceedingly short, and well done. The table was
decorated with that flower which some people call Johnny jump-up, and
some heartsease, and of which all that I can state positively is that
it is the great-grandmother of the pansy family. We had some tag-ends
of Moet and Chandon '84 to drink and a bottle of the old Chartreuse.
In the second place, it was the last time I was ever to sit at meat
under John Fulton's roof. The dinner had psychological peculiarities.
I was in love with my hostess; she with me. Twice I could have run
away with the girl in honor of whose engagement the dinner was being
given. My host, who personally had insisted on my presence, would have
been delighted to hear of my sudden death. The waitress would have
died for me (I had her word for it), and at the same time she despised
me. Within the week I had thrown myself on her mercy, and bought her
silence with a kiss.
What a dinner it would have been if we had elected to play truth; if
each person present could have been forced to say what he or she knew
about the others!
Personally I must have rushed out of the house, my fingers in my ears,
like Pilgrim.
But we didn't talk about embarrassing things. We made a lot of noise,
and did a lot of laughing, and toasting. But I was glad when it was
all over. I was always catching someone's eye, and thinking how much
harm a man can do, if with no will to do harm, he follows the lines of
least resistance and drifts. The harm that is done of malice and
purpose has at least a strength of conviction about it, and disregard
of consequences. It is far more respectable to do murder in cold
blood, than to slaughter a friend because you happen to be careless
with firearms.
Among other things that dinner proved to me that it is possible to do
several things at once: to laugh, talk, and think. I kept laughing and
talking and helping now and then to tease Evelyn and Dawson, and yet
all the while I was busy thinking of other things. And all the
thinking was based on one wish; not that I had never been born, but
that I had my whole life to live over again. Surely, I thought, with
another trial I might have amounted to something. I had money back of
me, I thought, and position, and a mind--well, not much of a mind, but
when you think what that Italian woman does with half-wit
children--surely the right educators could have made something quite
showy out of me. The energy I had put into acquiring skill at games
and in learning the short cuts to pleasure, might have been expended on
righteousness and the development of character. Most at ease with the
great, I might, during the dearth of great men, have aspired to be an
ambassador. I'd have married young, and have given all the tenderness
which various women have roused in me, to one woman. And there would
have been children, and stability, and a home constantly invaded by
proud and happy grandparents. Or if these fine things had not been in
my reach, at least I might have shaken the dust of futile places from
my feet, and closed my ears to the voices of futile people. Often I
have had the valorous adventurous impulse, and the curiosity to find
out what was "beyond the ranges"--merely to resist it. I am Tomlinson,
I thought. I might have been Childe Roland.
Was there not still time to turn a new leaf--to be somebody, to
accomplish something? Yes, I could make the woman who awaited me
beyond the puddle of scandal--happy. I could--I must be unselfish and
fine where she was concerned. The world might forgive me, it would
never quite forgive her. The world would never believe that we had
played the game as fairly as it can be played. There would be such
talk as, "Of course the moment Fulton found out what was going on, he
got rid of her." Other people would say, "Well, damaged goods is all
he ever deserved, anyway."
Lucy, damaged goods? I stole a look at her. Little and lovely and
happy and full of laughter at the head of her table, there was no
shadow upon that pansy face. She was, as always, living in the moment.
From all our troubles and complications, "a rose high up against the
thunder were not so white and far away." Remorse would never greatly
torment her. In time, too, Fulton's hungry stone-gray face of the last
weeks would fade from my memory.