Clark’s cheeks deepened to the color of his hair.
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Lucy Wharton. She told me the whole story.”
“Then you know it, sir,” said Clark almost rudely. “You know all there is to know.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I don’t know.” Clark stood up, breathing quickly. “I can’t talk about it. It’s my affair, you see. I——”
“Sit down, Llewellyn.”
The young man sat down, his face working. Suddenly it crinkled uncontrollably and two great tears, stained faintly with the dust of the day’s toil, gushed from his eyes.
“Oh, hell!” he said brokenly, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I’ve been wondering why you two can’t make a go of it, after all.” Garnett looked down at his desk. “I like you, Llewellyn, and I like Lucy. Why not fool everybody and——”
Llewellyn shook his head emphatically.
“Not me,” he said. “I don’t care a snap of my finger about her. She can go jump in the lake for all I care.”
“Why did you take her away?”
“I don’t know. We’d been in love for almost a year and marriage seemed a long way off. It came over us all of a sudden.”
“Why couldn’t you get along?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“I want your version.”
“Well, it started one afternoon when she took all our money and threw it away.”
“Threw it away?”
“She took it and bought a new hat. It was only thirty-five dollars, but it was all we had. If I hadn’t found forty-five cents in an old suit we wouldn’t have had any dinner.”
“I see,” said Garnett dryly.
“Then—oh, one thing happened after another. She didn’t trust me, she didn’t think I could take care of her, she kept saying she was going home to her mother. And finally we began to hate each other. It was a great mistake, that’s all, and I’ll probably spend a good part of my life paying for it. Wait till it leaks out!” He laughed bitterly.
“Aren’t you thinking about yourself a little too much?” suggested Garnett coldly.
Llewellyn looked at him in unfeigned surprise.
“About myself?” he repeated. “Mr. Garnett, I’ll give you my word of honor, this is the first time I’ve ever thought about that side of it. Right now I’d do anything in the world to save Lucy any pain—except live with her. She’s got great things in her, Mr. Garnett.” His eyes filled again with tears. “She’s just as brave and honest, and sweet sometimes. I’ll never marry anybody else, you can bet your life on that, but—we were just poison to each other. I never want to see her any more.”
After all, thought Garnett, it was only the old human attempt to get something for nothing—neither of them had brought to the marriage any trace of tolerance or moral experience. However trivial the reasons for their incompatibility, it was firmly established now in both their hearts, and perhaps they were wise in realizing that the wretched voyage, too hastily embarked upon, was over.
That night, Garnett had a long and somewhat painful talk with George Wharton, and on the following morning he went to New York, where he spent several days. When he returned to Philadelphia, it was with the information that the marriage of Lucy and Llewellyn Clark had been annulled by the state of Connecticut on the grounds of their minority. They were free.
II.
Almost everyone who knew Lucy Wharton liked her, and her friends rose rather valiantly to the occasion. There was a certain element, of course, who looked at her with averted eyes; there were slights, there were the stares of the curious; but since it was wisely given out, upon Chauncey Garnett’s recommendation, that the Whartons themselves had insisted upon the annulment, the burden of the affair fell less heavily upon Lucy than upon Llewellyn. He became not exactly a pariah—cities live too quickly to linger long over any single scandal—but he was cut off entirely from the crowd in which he had grown up, and much bitter and unpleasant comment reached his ears.
He was a boy who felt things deeply, and in the first moment of depression he contemplated leaving Philadelphia. But gradually a mood of defiant indifference took possession of him; try as he might, he wasn’t able to feel in his heart that he had done anything morally wrong. He hadn’t thought of Lucy as being sixteen, but only as the girl whom he loved beyond understanding. What did age matter? Hadn’t people married as children, almost, one hundred—two hundred years ago? The day of his elopement with Lucy had been like an ecstatic dream; he the young knight, scorned by her father, the baron, as a mere youth, bearing her away, and all willing, on his charger, in the dead of the night.
And then the realization, almost before his eyes had opened from their romantic vision, that marriage meant the complicated adjustment of two lives to each other, and that love is a small part only of the long, long marriage day. Lucy was a devoted child whom he had contracted to amuse—an adorable and somewhat frightened child, that was all.
As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Doggedly Llewellyn went his way, along with his mistake. And so quickly had his romance bloomed and turned to dust that after a month a merciful unreality began to clothe it as if it were something vaguely sad that had happened long ago.
One day in July he was summoned to Chauncey Garnett’s private office. Few words had passed between them since their conversation the month before, but Llewellyn saw that there was no hostility in the older man’s attitude.
He was glad of that, for now that he felt himself utterly alone, cut off from the world in which he had grown up, his work had come to be the most important thing in his life.
“What are you doing, Llewellyn?” asked Garnett, picking up a yellow pamphlet from the litter of his desk.
“Helping Mr. Carson with the Municipal Country Club.”
“Take a look at this.” He handed the pamphlet to Llewellyn. “There isn’t a gold mine in it, but there’s a good deal of this gilt-edge hot air they call publicity. It’s a syndicate of twenty papers, you see. The best plans for—what is it?—a neighborhood store—you know, a small drug store or grocery store that could fit into a nice street without being an eyesore. Or else for a suburban cottage—that’ll be the regular thing. Or thirdly for a small factory recreation house.”
Llewellyn read over the specifications.
“The last two aren’t so interesting,” he said. “Suburban cottage—that’ll be the usual thing, as you say—recreation house, no. But I’d like to have a shot at the first, sir—the store.”
Garnett nodded. “The best part is that the plan which wins each competition materializes as a building right away, and therein lies the prize. The building is yours. You design it, it’s put up for you, then you sell it and the money goes into your own pocket. Matter of six or seven thousand dollars—and there won’t be more than six or seven hundred other young architects trying.”
Llewellyn read it over again carefully.
“I like it,” he said. “I’d like to try the store.”
“Well, you’ve got a month. I wouldn’t mind it a bit, Llewellyn, if that prize came into this office.”
“I can’t promise you that.” Again Llewellyn ran his eyes over the conditions, while Garnett watched him with quiet interest.
“By the way,”