We Three Part 14

I shook my head.

"Why, John is all up in the air about something or other, and Lucy is worried sick about him. I thought probably she'd told you what the trouble was. I've asked. She said probably money had something to do with it; and that was all I could get out of her. Come down off that high horse and talk to me. I'm not riding till four."

So I left my pony standing at the front gate and Evelyn and I strolled about the grounds.

"Money isn't the whole trouble," said Evelyn presently. "I know that.

Something even more serious has gone terribly wrong. And I want to help."

"Won't they work it out best by themselves?" I suggested.

"Sometimes," she said, "it seems almost as if they had quarreled.

Sometimes John looks at her--Oh, as if he was going to die and was looking at her for the last time. Could he have something serious the matter with him?"

"He could, of course, but it doesn't seem likely."

"He doesn't _look_ well."

"True."

"Look here, Archie, don't you know what's wrong?"

"I wish I did," said I. "If I could right it."

As a matter of fact I didn't know what was wrong. I knew only that Lucy no longer loved her husband. But why she no longer loved him was the real trouble, and she had not told me that, even if she knew It herself. But wis.h.i.+ng to strengthen my answer, I said: "You're the one who ought to know what's wrong. You're on the spot. And besides, you're a woman and a woman is supposed to have three intuitions to a man's one."

Evelyn ignored this.

"Sometimes," she said, "John's so gentle and pathetic that I want to cry. Sometimes he is cantankerous and flies into rages about trifles.

It's getting on my nerves."

"Why not pack up your duds and move on?"

"Oh, because----"

I laughed maliciously. "We might move on together," I suggested.

"_You_ were going to move on," she said, "but you have stayed. I wonder why?"

I did not enlighten her.

"If," she said presently, "people find out that things in this house are at sixes and sevens I wonder if they won't find fault with you and Lucy? Has that occurred to you?"

"It has occurred to you," I said, "to my own mamma and doubtless to other connections. But it hasn't occurred to me. We see too much of each other?"

"Altogether."

"You really think that?"

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders. "For appearance' sake, yes," she said.

"Of course you do. But it's my opinion that if you'd been going to get sentimental about each other you'd have done it long ago."

"Evelyn," I said, "I've never made trouble in a family."

"Is that because of your natural virtue or because you have never wanted to?"

"A little of both, I think. People fall in love at first sight. That can't be helped. Or they fall in love very quickly, and that's hard to help. But people who fall in love gradually through long a.s.sociation have no good excuse for doing so, if they oughtn't. They should see it coming and quit seeing each other before it's too late."

"But I don't agree," said Evelyn. "I think love is always a first-sight affair. I don't mean necessarily the first time two people see each other, but that suddenly after years of a.s.sociation even, they will see each other in a new light."

"A light that was never on sea or land?"

"A light that is always where people are, just waiting to be turned on."

At that moment we heard Dawson Cooper's voice calling: "Hallo there!

Where are you?"

Presently he hove into sight, and did not seem altogether pleased at finding Evelyn and me together.

"Archie thought he was going to ride with Lucy," Evelyn explained, "but she threw him down, and I suppose we have got to ask him to ride with us!"

"Yes," I said, "I think you have, but I don't have to accept, do I?

You're just doing it so's not to hurt my feelings, aren't you? Of course if you really want me----"

"Come along, Coops," said Evelyn. "He's trying to tease us. He wouldn't ride with us for a farm."

We separated at the mounting-block, and I watched them a little way down the road. And felt a little touch of envy. Evelyn was looking very alluring that afternoon.

I rode in the opposite direction until I came to the big open flat north of the racetrack; there, a long way off, I saw John Fulton and Lucy walking slowly side by side. John was sabering dead weed stalks with his stick. So I turned east to avoid them, then north, until I had pa.s.sed the forlorn yellow pesthouse with its high, deer-park fence, and was well out in the country.

Then I left the main road, and followed one tortuous sandy track after another. Suddenly Heroine s.h.i.+ed. I looked up from a deep, aimless reverie, and saw sitting at the side of a trail a withered old negress.

She looked like a monkey buried in a mound of rags.

"Evening, Auntie," I said.

"Evening, boss."

Heroine had broken into a sweat, and was trembling. She kept her eyes on the old negress and her ears pointed at her, her nostrils widely dilated.

"My horse thinks you're a witch, Auntie," I said. "Hope you'll excuse her."

"I allows I got ter, boss, caze that's jes what I is."

"Honest to Gospel?" I laughed.

"You got fifty cents, boss?"

I found such a coin in my pocket and tossed it to her.

"I used to have," I said.