Fulton himself fell away from his friends in later years, not spiritually but physically. Lucy Fulton simply had to go on living among the people with whom she had been brought up, and in the manner to which she was accustomed; and Fulton seeing her pine and grow sorrowful in other conditions, and bored and fretful, gradually fell into her ways and wishes, as a gentleman shouldn't (but does always), and made his new friends among those who are born to be amused. Her love and happiness were far more important to him than changed ways and the injured feelings of old friends. Once he talked to me about this (for we grew quite intimate). I remember he said:
"Somehow I don't seem to see my old friends any more or keep up with them. If anything happened to Lucy, I'd be absolutely alone in the world, except for the babies. A man does wrong to drift away from those who he knows by a thousand proofs care for him, on any pretext or for any cause."
And yet he had come to wear the hallmarks of the pack, and to talk the language of the world that only asks to be happy and amused. He took to games seriously and played them well, and you couldn't point to him as one of those cautious persons who never by any chance drank even one cocktail too many. Indeed, he often became hilarious and witty, and added no end to the gayety of occasions, and was afterward privately reproached by Lucy. Coming from another, the hilarity and wit would have rejoiced her, but, coming from her nearest and dearest, her mind narrowed, and the cold fear that women have of liquor possessed her.
To me it has always been comical, even when I didn't feel well myself, to see the husbands come into the club after a big night; each wearing upon his face, as plainly as if they had been physical scratches, the marks of the wifely tears which he had been forced to witness, and of the reproaches which he had been forced to hear, and yet each trying to look as if he was the master of his own house and his own destiny. No well-born woman, however cold and calculating, can silently put up with her husband's drinking, yet how easily she overlooks it in any other man! How many excuses she will find for him:
"Why, he's quite wonderful! Of course I knew at once that he was tipsy, but he was perfectly sensible—perfectly."
If men didn't drink, women wouldn't have so many parties to go to or so much money to spend. How many teetotalers let their wives spend them into ruin and disgrace? It is the drinking American who indulges his wife and lets her make a fool of herself and him. It's his unconfessed, and perhaps unadmitted, remorse seeking a short cut to forgiveness.
It seems that I played too much pool and billiards for a small boy; and got into too much city mischief, for I learned at the end of a delightful Newport summer that I was to finish my schooling, not at Mr. Cutter's, but at Groton.
IV
In those Groton days I let matches strictly alone; I neither played with them, nor used them to light cigarettes with. I was vaguely ambitious to be great and splendid, and I was down on purposeless boys who didn't behave themselves.
Lucy's brother was in my form. She used to come to visit him, with her parents, in their car. Even for Groton parents the Ludlows were enormously rich, or if they weren't enormously rich, they were enormous spenders.
Lucy was seven years our junior, but even in those baby days she had the laughing mouth and the praying eyes that were to play such havoc later on. She was a child of the world; natural, straightforward, and easy-going.
Lucy at nine was so pretty, so engaging, and had so much charm and magnetism that I remember having regretted, very solemnly, and with youthful finality, that we did not belong to the same generation. I was sorry that she was not fifteen or sixteen like myself; so that I could be in love with her and she with me!
Once Lucy was so sick that they thought she was going to die, and Schuyler was called home from school. The whole school was affected, so strong and vivid was its memory of an engaging and fearless child. I remember being sorrier than ever that I had been confirmed into a system which makes disease contagious instead of health, and asking one of the masters how he reconciled the death of a kid like that, whom everybody loved, with his conception of an all-wise and all-merciful God. He answered, it has always seemed to me very lamely, that if we didn't believe that all was for the best, in this best of all worlds, we should never get anywhere.
All for the best! If we are to forgive the Power that sets him on, why not the murderer himself who does the real dirty work? If all is for the best, so then must the component parts of all (each and every) be for the best. In short we can do no wrong in this best of worlds. Oh, what grim, weak-minded nonsense they prate and preach!
There was hand-clapping when the Rector told us that Schuyler Ludlow's little sister was going to get well, and presently Schuyler returned to school somewhat self-important, as becomes one who has sat at meat with famous doctors, and talked of them in extremis.
The first rime I rode with Lucy through the Aiken woods, I recalled this famous illness of hers, and I think it had something to do with all that happened afterward.
We had lost ourselves, a little, as you do at Aiken, among the infinity of sand trails beyond the Whitney drive. We knew where we were, of course, and we knew where Aiken was, but every trail that started toward it fetched up short with a wrong turning. It was one of those bright hot days in late February, when a few jasmine flowers have opened, and you are pretty sure that there won't be any more long spells of rain or freezing cold. Even Lucy, who loved riding, was content to sit a walking horse, and bask in the sunshine.
I mentioned her famous illness, and she remembered nothing about It. "I'm always too busy," she said, "with what's going on right now to remember things."
"Why," I said, "Schuyler was sent for, and you were given up half a dozen times. Don't you really remember at all?"
"They wouldn't have told me I was being given up right and left, would they? Probably it didn't hurt much, and I was given a great many presents. It seems to me I do remember one particularly great time of presents, when lots of old gentlemen came to see me."
"I hoped you'd remember better," I said; "because at the time it seemed to me one of the most important things that had ever happened in the world."
Lucy listened eagerly. She didn't in the least mind a conversation that was all about herself.
"The whole school," I said, "was touched with solemnity. Now you wouldn't take me for a praying man, would you?"
"I don't know. Wouldn't I?"
"Whether I am or not," I said, "doesn't matter now, because I have so little to pray for. But at that time I went down on my knees and prayed that you'd get well."
"You were very fond of Schuyler, weren't you?"
"And am. But that wasn't the reason. I don't know just what the reason was. Maybe I was looking forward to this ride, and didn't want to miss it! I was ashamed to be seen praying, so I prayed in bed. But I was afraid that wouldn't do any good, so when my roommate had gone to sleep I got up in the dark and went down on my marrowbones on the bare icy floor, and I prayed like a good 'un."
Lucy's mouth laughed, but her eyes prayed.
"Then, maybe," she said, "if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be here now."
"I'd like to think that," I said; "but there must have been lots of others who prayed. I should like nothing better than a Carnegie hero medal, with the attached pension, but the jury require proofs."
"It's funny," she said, "to think of you kneeling on the icy floor and praying for me."
"For your recovery!" I corrected her.
"I think it would have been nicer if you had prayed for me. Didn't you—even a little?"
"If I had realized