We Three Part 19

"Then you _do_ care. Oh, thank G.o.d!"

I don't know how she got there. It was as if I had waked up and found her in my arms.

Kissed and kissing, we heard the opening of the distant front door.

And Oh, how I wish I had found the courage when Fulton came into the livingroom, to tell him that I loved his wife, and that she loved me, and what was he going to do about it! I did have the impulse, but not the courage. When Fulton came in Lucy was knitting at an interminable green necktie, and I was talking to her from a far chair across an open number of the ill.u.s.trated _London News_. We looked, I believe, as casual and innocent as cherubim, but my conscience was very guilty, and it seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, that for the first time Fulton showed me a certain curtness of manner, as if he was not pleased at finding me so often in his house.

XIX

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. Pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sing over those barriers and belonging to each other. John Fulton and his children were but vague pale shadows across the suns.h.i.+ne.

The sleep that I got that night, short though it was, was infinitely refres.h.i.+ng. 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 ign.o.ble 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 gla.s.s 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."

I felt like a convicted criminal.

"Did I--mention the lady's name?"

She nodded. "You were talking about Mrs. Fulton," she said in a low voice, "only you didn't call her that."

"Hilda," I said firmly. "Mrs. Fulton and I are very old friends--nothing more."

I could see that she didn't believe me, and I changed my tactics.

"You'll not talk, Hilda?"

Her face had resumed its natural color, and she now looked me once more in the eyes. "I'd sooner die than hurt you, Mr. Archie."