"Was I ever unkind to you?"
"Never."
"Tenderness and kindness--that's something to go on."
She turned her head and kissed the hand that pressed against her
shoulder. It was the slightest, gentlest, softest kiss, and a lump
rose in my throat.
"If the angels could see me now," she said, "and know what was in my
heart, they'd die of envy."
"And what's in your heart, Hilda?"
"You," she said.
The house where she was staying had an inner and an outer door. In the
obscurity between these two we stood for a little while at parting, and
kissed each other.
And as soon thereafter as could be, we were quietly married.
When I began to put down this story about the Fultons, I was still head
over heels in love with Lucy, and I did not know how it was all going
to end. And I don't know now. I began to write before Hilda became a
definite figure in my life, to write in order to pass the time. And so
I wrote until I realized that I had failed Lucy, and began to hope that
she had failed me. Even then I expected to live the same old fleeting
life of a butterfly bachelor to the end. Then I began to think that
out of the thing I was writing, there was beginning to rise a kind of
lesson, a preachment. It seemed to me that I was going through an
experience that others would do well to know about.
Can a man live down the shame of scorching another man's happiness,
after finding that the cause which drove him to do so, has lost its
power to impel? I am not ashamed of having loved Lucy; I am ashamed of
not having loved her enough. Thank God no greater harm was done to
Fulton than was done. He has his Lucy, what there is left of her, his
children, and a greater financial success than ever he hoped for. And
he has had his triumph over me. He must have told her, in some of his
bad moments, just what kind of a man I was--a waster, a male flirt, a
man who had the impulse to raise the devil, but lacked the courage, and
the character. And she knows now, after her short period of
over-powering love for me and belief in me, that he was right. That is
his triumph. I think he is too good a gentleman to rub it in.
My father and mother accepted Hilda with the sweetest good grace. She
was not what they had hoped for; she was not what they had expected or
feared. To my father it seemed, he was good enough to say so, that I
had played the man. And he could not, he said, help loving any woman,
whether she came from the roof of the world or its cellar, who had
loved his son so faithfully and so long.
And the rings on Hilda's finger, and the pride in her new estate, and
the pretty clothes that my mother helped her to buy worked a wondrous
change in her. People couldn't help looking after her, she was so
pretty, so graceful, and had so much faith and worship in her eyes.
We had put off our date of sailing a little, so that my friends might
see that I was not ashamed of what I had done, but that I gloried in
it, and that my parents showed a face of approval to the world. Those
days of postponement were, I think, the best days of my life. A
treasure had been given into my guardianship, and it seemed to me that
I was going to be worthy of the trust.
Then, the very day before we were to sail, I met Lucy face to face in
the street; and began to tremble a little. She held out both hands;
she was always so natural and frank.
"So you've done it!" she exclaimed; "I think she's sweet, and so
good-looking."
Then the smile faded from her lips, and she made the praying eyes at
me, and I knew that I had only to be with her a moment to love her.
"Of course," she said, "it's all right our meeting and speaking _now_."
"Of course," I said, and they sounded lame words, lamely spoken.
"Do you believe in post-mortems?" she asked.
"No," I said, "but I like them."
"We--Oh, it's lucky we had parents and guardians, isn't it? When did
you come to the end of your rope?"